Chapter 2 Elise #3
“Oh, gosh,” she said, admiring the way the artist had managed to create the impression of space and light. “It’s beautiful.”
Sam smiled. “Sylvia didn’t show you that one? This house is full of surprises.”
“D’you think that’s what the garden looked like once?”
“I imagine so, yes.”
“It’s exactly as I pictured it.” She went over to examine the paintwork more closely, examining its condition. The paint was flaking off in places, and there were some scuffs where the door had come into contact with some furniture at some point, but overall, it wasn’t in bad shape.
Sam was at the window, unfolding the shutters to show her the decoration. “These are in worse shape than the door. I think some damp must have got in. They’ll have to be replaced. But you can photograph them first to help you recreate them.”
Elise glanced over, her attention caught not by the faded patterns painted on the shutters, but by a mark on Sam’s hand. With a start, she realised he had one finger missing.
“Accident with a band saw when I was an apprentice,” he said, noticing her looking.
“Sorry,” she said, embarrassed at being caught staring.
“What for?” he asked, his tone easy. “My losing a finger, or your noticing it?” He put his hand out, palm down, to show her, and Elise saw it was his middle finger that was gone. His index finger was slanted across slightly to compensate, filling the space.
“People don’t often spot it straightaway,” he said, folding the window shutter back against the wall. “But then, being an artist, you’re probably observant.”
As he reached up to test the strength of the wooden pelmet at the top of the window frame, the muscles in his back moved beneath his T-shirt.
All of a sudden, Elise had the strangest feeling someone else was in the room with them, as if someone else was looking at Sam, too, over her shoulder.
There was no one there, of course, when she looked, but the hairs on the back of her neck had stood up on end, and somehow she couldn’t shake off the feeling of being observed.
Sam was watching her curiously. “It’s not that repulsive, I hope? My finger?”
“Not at all,” she said quickly, appalled that he could misinterpret her reaction that way. “I was only wondering if it affected your work.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s ages old, so I’m used to it. Shall we move on?”
The next room was the dining room. Entering, Elise gasped out loud, her breath literally taken away by the paintings on all four walls.
They were all of the salt marshes and the sea, and so vivid Elise almost expected to see some of the black-and-white birds with the long orange beaks she and Robbie had seen on their walk from the hotel flying across the wall.
“This is spectacular,” she breathed.
“It will be even better once you’ve restored it. I did think it would be quite cool to have a sound recording of the local bird life playing in here, actually.”
“It really would.”
The last room was at the back of the house.
“Careful,” Sam said when they reached it. “You could easily put your foot through the floorboards the way your husband was afraid you might in here. I’m in the middle of replacing the floor at the moment.”
Sam, aware of where it was safe to tread, went into the room, while Elise peered in more cautiously from the doorway.
There were large windows running almost the entire length of the far wall, with a view out to untamed trees, shrubs, and stinging nettles pressing claustrophobically right against the glass.
“When is someone coming to work on the garden?”
“I’m not sure. But I might be tempted to tackle some of it myself if they don’t come soon. This room must have been filled with light at one time. I think it was once used as a studio.”
“What makes you think that?” Elise asked, her imagination already supplying the smells of oil paints, turpentine, and linseed oil.
Sam pointed to a stack of rotten floorboards in one corner of the room. “Paint splatters on the floor. And not the sort made from decorating.”
“I wonder if Sylvia knows anything about the history of the house?”
“I’m not sure. She hasn’t said anything to me. We’ll have to ask her when she finally manages to fly over. Though I don’t suppose it would be hard to find out another way in a village this size.”
Suddenly Elise remembered the photograph. “Did you see the exhibition at the village hall a few months ago? It was all about the village during the Second World War.”
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t, no. I was working in Cromer then. Was it good?”
“Yes. There was one particular photograph that really struck me.”
“What was it of?”
She paused, making herself speak in a normal, conversational voice.
“An evacuee boy. There was something about him, his expression. It made me want to find out more about him.” She hesitated again, about to say more, but deciding she wasn’t quite ready to.
“I took a photograph of it, actually. It’s on my camera. ”
“You’ll have to show it to me,” he said. “I’m sorry I missed the exhibition. Maybe you could ask around to find out who was behind it? The village shop might be a good place to start.”
“Good idea.”
Sam was looking around the room. “The bare walls in here are another reason I think this might have been a studio. Everywhere else in the house is decorated, but this was left blank. It would be good to find out more about the artist who lived here, though, wouldn’t it?
Given that this place is obviously inspired by the artists at Charleston.
Have you ever been there? I’ve been meaning to go for ages. ”
Elise had often visited Charleston, the farmhouse in Sussex the artists of the Bloomsbury Group had filled with paintings and murals in the early part of the twentieth century.
“I have, yes. A few times. My gran used to volunteer there.”
“Did she? That’s amazing. Can you sense the artists’ personalities when you’re there? Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell?”
“Totally. The whole house is steeped in their personalities.”
“I really must try to make time to go there sometime soon. It’s difficult, though, because—” He broke off as his phone began to ring. “Sorry,” he said, looking at it. “I’ll have to take this.”
“Sure.”
Elise left him to take the call, wandering back up the hallway to the kitchen, trying not to listen in to what he was saying, surprised by the change in his voice.
This was a different Sam; an irritated, impatient Sam.
But then maybe this was what he was usually like, and the charming, smiley man she’d encountered so far was someone who only popped up now and then.
She didn’t think so, but then she didn’t know, did she?
She’d barely spent an hour in the man’s company.
In the kitchen, she moved the abandoned breakfast things from the table below the window for something to do, stacking them next to the sink. When Sam joined her, his face was shadowed.
“Apologies, I’m going to have to leave early. My daughter needs to be fetched from a friend’s house. Will you be all right? I should have thought to get you some food in. The shop’s closed now, unfortunately. There’s tea and coffee. Milk. But . . .”
If she’d had any appetite, Sam’s mention of his daughter had taken it away. Stupid to feel despondent because he had a child. Most people over a certain age had children. She couldn’t avoid everyone who had children forever. “I can go to the pub.”
Sam nodded, clearly doubtful. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. You get off. I’ll go for a walk. Stretch my legs.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow, then.”
He left the room, then came straight back, taking something from his pocket. A card. “This is me, if you need anything.”
Elise took the card from him. Sam Gibson, Joinery and Renovations.
“Thanks.”
He nodded. “See you tomorrow, Elise. I’ll be here about nine.”
“Okay, bye, Sam.”
The door closed after him. Elise heard his steel-capped work boots on the garden path. Pictured the encroaching weeds being swept back by his legs. The garden gate opening and closing.
She stood for a moment, listening to the silence, trying to find peace in the lack of noise.
But inside her head it wasn’t quiet at all.
A hundred different images, feelings, and snippets of conversations were jostling for space.
Robbie’s possessiveness. Sam’s missing finger.
The paint splatters on the floorboards. The reality of the huge task she’d taken on with this job.
And loneliness, grief: her ever-constant companions these days.
A walk. She’d told Sam she would go for a walk, and that was what she’d do. A glimpse of the sea would do her good.
Locking the house securely behind her, Elise made her way down the garden path and turned left down the lane.
But when she reached the small car park at the end of it, the sea was miles away, the way it had been when she and Robbie had visited before.
The distance of the sea was the only similarity, though, because the marshes themselves had been transformed—she’d thought them impressive then, but now they were truly spectacular, covered in a hauntingly beautiful haze of pale purple flowers, masses of them, as far as the eye could see.
The beauty of it was too much. The soft purple blue of the flowers.
Water in pools, catching the sunlight. Seabirds calling to each other.
Skylarks high above her head. Elise wanted to cry.
To turn her back on it all and retreat to Marsh House.
But instead, she forced herself to step onto the muddy path that led to the sea, the expanse of the land seeming to swell with every step she took, the horizon never getting any nearer.
Until it felt as if she was inhabiting some kind of purple infinity.
A dog was barking somewhere. She turned to look, but couldn’t see it, so she carried on walking along the twisting path. Then, all of a sudden, she was startled by a child squealing somewhere close by. A woman’s voice, speaking to her.
“Sorry if we made you jump.”
Elise looked down into one of the water-filled gullies left by the retreating tide and saw a woman with a very young child who was playing with great glee in the black mud.
A mud cherub, naked and slippery, his blond curls standing out in stark contrast to his skin as he splashed and squelched about.
The woman smiled at her expression. “We’re staying at the campsite, so I haven’t got far to go to wash him off.”
“That’s good,” Elise said, smiling. “He certainly looks as if he’s enjoying himself.”
The mother laughed. “Whatever gives you that idea?”
As she stood there with a fake smile on her mouth, Elise knew there were other things she could have said.
That simple pleasures were cheaper than theme parks and made for better memories than soft play areas.
That kind of thing. But all of it was swamped out because suddenly all she could see was Charlie playing with his little dog, Lulu, in a stream they’d loved, getting muddy and soaking wet.
Lulu, who she and Robbie had decided to rehome after Charlie died because seeing her pining face every day was more painful than either of them could bear.
“The sea lavender’s so beautiful this year, isn’t it?” the woman was saying now.
Sea lavender—so that was what it was. “It really is, yes.”
“We came out here yesterday evening with my husband, and a barn owl drifted past so close we could feel the draught from its wings.”
What a perfect memory. Elise hated it. Coveted it. Wished she’d never heard about it. And yet she said, “How wonderful,” and the woman smiled at her.
“Are you on holiday too?”
“Um . . . a sort of working holiday.”
But the woman’s son had got hold of a handful of mud and plastered his hair with it, so she wasn’t listening to Elise anymore.
“Archie, honestly!” his mother protested, but she was laughing along with him, and Elise turned away, unable to bear their happiness a moment longer.
“I’d better get on,” she said. “Have fun.”
“Bye . . .”
Elise walked on as quickly as the slippery mud would allow her to, keeping her eyes down to choose the best route in the tangle of paths and gullies, the child’s squeals of pleasure soon silenced by distance.
The dog barked again, but this time Elise didn’t bother to look for it. She didn’t want any of this. Not sea lavender, gliding barn owls, or children playing in the mud. None of it.
The photograph. That was what she had to cling to. It was the whole reason she’d come here. She would go to the village shop to ask who’d organised the exhibition as soon as she could. First thing in the morning. Just as soon as they opened.
But right now, she would go back to Marsh House and phone her grandmother.