CHAPTER 5
Joanna
Dorset
The following morning, Joanna made breakfast, pouring tea from the same faded and tea-stained yellow pot that she remembered from countless other breakfasts and teatimes at Mulberry Farm Cottage.
Coming back here, coming home, was like going back in time, she thought.
But very, very different. She chatted to their mother, keeping the subjects light, and persuaded Harriet not to hurry back after she’d done her chores in town.
‘What would you like to do this morning, Mother?’ she asked.
‘We could sort through the things in the loft,’ her mother said. Nothing wrong with her memory, then. ‘Get it cleared out, just in case . . .’
At this, Harriet hovered frowning in the doorway, one basket of vegetables in each hand.
The dark-veined leaves of the cabbages crinkled invitingly and the cauliflowers’ creamy hearts were shrouded with pale tissue-green.
Joanna hadn’t asked her what she would do after she’d made the deliveries.
Let Harriet have no one to answer to for once in her life.
‘Go, go.’ And despite everything, Joanna couldn’t help laughing. ‘No Handy Andy, I promise.’
Joanna cleared up the kitchen, walked with her mother to the orchard, picked some fruit and made morning coffee at eleven just as her mother liked it.
Mother chatted on, slipping easily into reminiscences of when Joanna’s father was still alive, of when both girls had been young, and as she spoke, there was a wistful expression on her mother’s face that tugged at Joanna’s heart.
This, she thought, was Harriet’s life . .
. And she was beginning to understand it better than she ever had before.
For Joanna, there was something very special about this time with her mother, but if she had to do it every day, she couldn’t quite imagine how frustrating that might feel.
‘And now the loft?’ her mother asked eagerly.
‘And now the loft,’ Joanna agreed. ‘You stay down here and I’ll take a look around, see how much is up there and maybe bring a few bits and pieces down. OK?’ Photo albums maybe, she was thinking. Old school projects and exercise books. Come to think of it, she had no idea what was up there.
She settled her mother on the sofa with one of her favourite magazines and made her way upstairs, lugging a paint-spattered stepladder she’d found in the porch along with her.
The attic trapdoor was closed and bolted.
Probably no one had been up here for years.
She could remember her father one time, looking for something, scrabbling about under the dusty rafters and lagging.
But mostly, things were kept in the sheds and the barns.
Not that Joanna was looking for office space . . . She thought of her own office back in the house at Crouch End. Would she ever work there again? Would she have a new house, a new work space somewhere? It was difficult to imagine . . . So, don’t think about it.
She unbolted the hatch, pushed the door open and, summoning all her strength, pulled her weight onto her arms and over the edge of the hatchway. Ouff. Like a bag of flour, and about as graceful. She pulled up her knees and manoeuvred into a squat.
God, it was like another world up here. A dark world. And she hadn’t brought a torch – how stupid was that? She felt around with her hands, though, found the light switch, flicked it on and miraculously the attic was flooded with light.
Joanna brushed the dust from her jeans. It was chilly too and smelt musty.
She wrinkled her nose and shivered as she looked around her.
She could see some rolls of old carpeting, a few cardboard boxes, and in the far corner an electric fire.
Next to that was an ancient canvas bag, some old tools poking from the top, and a big trunk, though how anyone had got that up here she couldn’t imagine.
She peered into the other corners. No precious works of art, unfortunately, no Ming vases or anything of that calibre to save the cottage from its own decay.
Only cobwebs. And not too much to clear out either.
She made her way over to the boxes; they were mostly full of books.
She glanced at the spines – she remembered these astronomy and philosophy books of her father’s being in the study, recalled that she’d been quite young the first time she considered the incongruity of a farmer who was also an academic.
How had that come about, she wondered now – or was she making a stereotypical assumption?
Probably. She knew the farm had been in Father’s family for generations, that over the years various owners had sold off land from what had once been a bigger estate.
But that was all she knew of the family history.
She had, though, one specific memory of when her uncle and his family were staying with them one summer.
She thought back. It was teatime. The adults were talking about the mulberry tree – at least that’s what she’d thought at the time.
Someone (her father?) looked at the children, told his brother to hush, and that was about the sum of it.
Joanna had no clue why she’d even remembered, apart from the fact that she’d sensed she wasn’t supposed to be listening and that was always a draw.
Was it a secret? Maybe. A certain look had passed between Father and her uncle.
There had been some hint of disapproval.
And that was all. Something and nothing, she thought now.
Would Mother want to look through these books? Maybe.
In one of the moth-eaten boxes she found some carrier bags.
The plastic had withered but they were full of that old school stuff of hers and Harriet’s she’d been thinking of: paintings done at infant school, collages and crafts, cards they’d sent to Mother and Father, gift tags for Christmas presents they’d made themselves using old Christmas cards and Mother’s zigzaggy scissors, as they used to call them – embroidery scissors, that was.
Joanna smiled as she dusted her forefinger lightly over the glitter.
Fancy their mother keeping all this old stuff.
But she was glad. She’d definitely take these bags downstairs, she decided.
They could look back over old times, enjoy it all together.
How safe was the floor? Someone had placed an old door across the beams to act as a walkway but it seemed to sag under her weight as she moved gingerly over towards the trunk.
She pulled it away from the eaves and dislodged some of the lagging.
The insulation was so thin – it was no wonder the cottage was cold and draughty in winter.
What was Harriet thinking? Hadn’t she considered applying for a grant to get some decent insulation? The heating bills must be enormous.
Downstairs seemed so far away to Joanna right now.
This was other; it didn’t seem to belong to their family, to the present, or even to Mulberry Farm Cottage, but to some other time, some other person.
Joanna felt the goosebumps travel up her arms. Perhaps part of that other person – their spirit maybe – was here still, watching, waiting?
The trunk was coated in thick dust. Joanna sneezed but the sound was muted, as if it was being absorbed into the beams, the rafters and the meagre insulation.
She jiggled the catch of the trunk. It was an old-fashioned metal lock that had rusted and stuck fast. She pulled at it again.
The trunk seemed almost empty. But not quite.
When she moved it, there was a soft rustle from within.
Maybe there was a key somewhere? She ran her fingers along the ledge of wood under the rafters.
Nothing – only dirt, dust and splinters.
But Joanna had got the bit between her teeth now. She groped around in the canvas bag of tools until she found a chisel with a flat head. Carefully, she slotted this into the latch. Pushed back for leverage. Twang. It burst open. Not locked then. Just old and stiff.
She eased up the lid, which gave a satisfying moan of relief as if it hadn’t been opened for years.
The trunk was empty, except for a small bundle of papers tied with a black ribbon.
How odd. She pulled it out. Letters? Old letters?
She felt a dart of excitement. Old family letters?
She hesitated. Should she disturb their resting place?
They didn’t belong to her. If they were letters, and someone had gone to the trouble of keeping them tied with ribbon and stored in the attic, then they must be personal.
But she was a journalist after all and curiosity won over.
This was her family and both writer and recipient were presumably long gone.
She took a peek. The top page was covered with a faded but flowing delicate script; a woman’s hand, surely?
She touched the paper it had been written on.
It was so old and brittle, she worried it might crack and crumble into dust between her fingers.
There was a date written at the top of the first sheet.
31st October 1912. Oh my God. Who . . . ? Venice. Venice? Her breath caught.
‘Joanna?’ Her mother’s voice, sounding more tremulous than before, drifted through the house and up into the attic. ‘Are you still up there? It’s past lunchtime, you know, and—’
Joanna pulled herself to her feet. ‘I’m coming down, Mother,’ she called. ‘Just a minute.’
Picking up one of the flimsy carrier bags, she slipped the letters inside, cushioning them between Harriet’s pink tissue-paper pineapple and the long cotton-wool beard of a hand-crafted Father Christmas.
She made her way over to the hatch, switched off the light, emerged backwards and climbed back down the stepladder.
About to go downstairs, Joanna hesitated for a moment.
She slipped into her bedroom, took the letters carefully out of the bag, gave them a longing look and tucked them under the faded coverlet.
She would read them – she couldn’t resist – but not now.
And for some reason that she didn’t understand, she didn’t want to share them with anyone – not yet.
Her mother was waiting in the hall, looking anxious, her face a web of lines and memories. ‘Lunch first then,’ Joanna said. She waggled the carrier bag in her hand. ‘And then we’ll take a look at this little lot.’
Her mother brightened. ‘How wonderful,’ she breathed.
Joanna felt quite pleased with herself. Harriet had been gone all morning and she’d managed just fine.
She might not have got any work done but at least there were no tradesmen in sight.
And she had the feeling that she’d inadvertently unearthed something rather exciting – which would be a good distraction to stop her thinking about Martin.
Another family secret perhaps? She couldn’t wait to find out.