Chapter 11 Elise
Elise
Elise was walking Lulu along the path at the top of the marshes—the one she and Robbie had walked along before they’d gone to the exhibition that wet Saturday afternoon.
Ever since her unpleasant encounter with Ted Cook’s aggressive German shepherd, Elise had mostly walked along this path when she took Lulu out.
She hadn’t entirely ruled out suggesting Ted for the job of clearing the garden at Marsh House—the idea of picking his brains about anyone who might know more about the village during the war was still in the back of her mind—but for the moment, at least, she stayed focussed on her own work.
Sometimes, on the marshes, she saw hares running through the sea lavender.
Once, just after dawn, a fox. But always birds.
She knew the oyster catchers now, but soon she began to recognise other birds, too—curlews, lapwings, egrets.
The birds from Esther’s tapestry seat backs.
If she came across any she didn’t recognise, she memorised the details of them and looked them up in the field guide she’d bought when she got back to Marsh House.
“You’ll be asking me for a pair of binoculars for Christmas at this rate,” Robbie had teased her when they spoke on the phone.
“No, it’s okay,” she was able to tell him. “Sam’s lent me a pair.”
“Oh,” said Robbie, sounding disgruntled. “Has he now?” Then, “Be honest, though, Elle, aren’t you bored out of your mind up there? What d’you do with yourself in the evenings?”
“I’ve met up with Esther a few times. She’s really nice. We’ve been for a few drinks at the pub, and I love to see how she’s getting on with her tapestries.”
She’d gone out with Sam for something to eat once too.
Not that she told Robbie about that—she knew full well what his reaction would be.
She and Sam had chatted about the restoration project at first—about Lilias and what life must have been like at Marsh House during the war.
About the marshes and Lilias’s obvious passion for them.
Then, after a while, they’d moved on to more personal topics.
Sam had told her about his recent divorce—a result of his wife having an affair—and how he’d realised he ought to care more about his wife’s infidelity than he actually did.
Elise, for her part, had told him about her upbringing, and how her mother—a single parent—had died when Elise was in her early teens.
“Gran brought me up—the two of us had always been really close anyway. More on the same wavelength as me and Mum, though obviously I missed Mum, and was sad she’d died.”
“It must have been very tough for you,” he’d said, compassion on his face.
Elise forced a smile. “It was, yes. But Gran did a fantastic job. As I say, we’re very close. I know I can always depend on her for anything.”
“That sort of confidence in someone is so important,” he said. “I think . . . I hope Jasmine thinks that about me. I’m sure Charlie did about you and Robbie.”
Although his mention of Charlie brought tears to her eyes, she didn’t mind.
It was good to talk about him, and she was confident Charlie had known he could depend on her.
Even if it did feel she’d failed him by not spotting he was ill sooner than she had.
She almost said this to Sam, but stopped herself just in time, not wanting to be too maudlin.
And then they’d moved on to other topics, and the moment had passed.
“I’m not bored at all,” she told Robbie on the phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of drawings in my spare time. Portraits mostly.”
“Of Sam?” he snapped straightaway, and Elise sighed.
“No, not of Sam. People from my imagination.”
She’d ended the call shortly after that, not having told Robbie the whole truth about her drawings.
For they weren’t strictly from her imagination; they came from her increasingly vivid and frequent dreams. She hadn’t had a repeat performance of the kind of vision she’d had on the morning of Charlie’s birthday, the morning she’d been icy cold and seen a boy playing in the snow.
But Lilias—at least Elise thought the woman was Lilias—did visit her while she slept, giving her snatched glimpses of life back then.
Lilias painting the marsh murals. Singing to herself as she worked, dressed in a pair of brown men’s overalls.
Walking through the marshes with a little Jack Russell dog.
Elise didn’t find these dreams or visitations in the least bit creepy.
In fact, in a way, they were company. Her one regret was that she hadn’t seen the boy again in any of them, so, to her frustration, she was no further forward in her quest to find out more about him.
When she’d tried phoning the museum service to try to identify the museum outreach worker who’d worked on the exhibition, it was to find that, like Esther’s friend, she was on leave.
But she was due to return to work today, so Elise intended to give her a call just as soon as she could.
“Come on, Lulu,” she said now. “Time to go back to start work.”
But Lulu was standing stock still, listening to something, her head cocked to one side.
“What is it, girl?” Elise said, but suddenly she heard. A man’s voice, calling across the marshes. It sounded as if he was saying, Lilias. Lilias. Over here.
As Lulu began to bark, Elise shielded her eyes against the light and scanned the marshes in the direction the dog was looking. Nothing. She turned to look back along the path. Still nothing, not even when she swivelled a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
She waited, ears strained, and suddenly she saw him.
Not there, on the marshes, but inside her head.
Walking through the sea lavender towards her.
Dark haired like herself, eyes sparkling with amusement and affection.
Wearing a big woollen trench coat, the collar turned up against the wind.
Elise sensed it would be a pleasure to meet him.
That he was kind, like Sam. And she was seized by a strong desire to draw him before his image faded.
“Come on, Lulu. Home, girl!”
Back at Marsh House, Elise unclipped Lulu’s lead, made sure she had water to drink, then went straight up to her room to find her sketchbook and pencils.
By the time Sam arrived half an hour later, the drawing was finished, and Elise was satisfied she’d been able to capture the man as she’d seen him.
Who was he? Someone Lilias knew? And why had he popped so insistently into her mind like that?
He’d been walking towards her so purposefully, as if he had something to tell her.
But it hadn’t been her name he’d been calling in her mind, it had been Lilias’s.
It was as if he’d been calling to Lilias for help.
Elise looked at the drawing again, frowning.
There was something missing from it, something else she ought to have put in, though for the life of her she couldn’t think what that might be.
And there wasn’t time to think about it any longer because Sam was calling up the stairs to her, asking if she wanted a cup of coffee.
“Yes, please, just coming,” she called back, closing the sketch book and leaving it on the bed.
After a brief chat with Sam, she took her coffee with her and pressed on with her restoration work on the marshes murals, promising herself she would phone Jean, the museum outreach worker during her lunch break.
Or perhaps before then, in case Jean was, herself, at lunch.
She wouldn’t be able to bear it if they missed each other, she really wouldn’t.
By eleven thirty, she could wait no longer and dialled the number she’d been given to get straight through to Jean, relieved when Jean herself answered.
“I wanted to ask you in particular about one of the photographs you had on display,” she said after a brief introduction. “It was of a group of evacuee children, standing outside the village hall. I wondered whether you knew who the children were; whether you had any names for them.”
“I’m afraid not, no,” Jean said. “If I remember rightly, those photographs were an anonymous donation. We put an appeal in the local newspaper, you see, asking whether anyone had any photos or mementos from that time we could use for the exhibition. The photographs came in an envelope, as I say, without a note. But they were too good not to be used, I think you’ll agree. ”
Crushed by disappointment, Elise was reluctant to end the call. “So there’s really no way to find out who the children in the photographs were?”
“I don’t think so, no. Not unless somebody who lives locally recognises them? Are you researching your family?”
“Something like that,” Elise said, because it was easier than explaining something she didn’t really understand herself.
“Well, good luck. As I say, the best idea might be to ask around. If there are any groups for the older residents, you could go along to them, perhaps, and ask there. Anyway, I’m afraid I have to go now; I have to get to a meeting.”
“Well, thank you very much for your time.”
“No problem at all. Say hello to Iris for me, should you happen to see her. Bye for now.”
It wasn’t a bad idea to see if there were any social groups for older residents.
Esther would probably know; she’d give her a call later on.
She picked up her paintbrush again, feeling despondent, but before she could start work, Sam shouted to her, sounding excited.
“Elise! Come and take a look at this! I’ve found something amazing! ”
She quickly went to join him in the room they’d decided to call the studio and found him in the process of taking a wooden sheet off the far wall.
“I realised this whole wall was boarded over, so I thought I’d take a look at what was underneath, and I found this. It’s okay, the floor’s safe now. Come and see.”
She went quickly over to join him and gasped out loud, her hands flying to her mouth. It was another painting—around three feet by four feet, not wall size, of three people—a woman Elise guessed to be Lilias, the man she had drawn only that morning. And the boy. The boy from the photograph.
Elise slowly went over to the painting and reached out to touch the boy’s face.
Just lately she’d been starting to doubt her compulsion to come here, her absolute conviction that the evacuee in the photograph strongly resembled Charlie.
But here was physical proof. It was almost as if Charlie himself had posed for this painting—as if Elise had been the artist at the easel recording this moment in oil paint.
“What is it?” asked Sam, looking at her, sounding concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“This boy,” she began, wiping away a tear, then knew she would have to show him if she wanted him to understand. “Wait a minute. I just have to fetch something.”
She went to fetch her camera, then quickly scrolled through the photographs to find a suitable one. “Look. This is Charlie.”
Sam took the camera from her. Studied the photograph. Looked at the painting on the wall.
“My God, the similarity is incredible,” he said. “But what does it mean? I mean, how can they look so alike?”
“I don’t know,” Elise said, relieved he could see the resemblance. Frustrated that his seeing it didn’t put her any further forward.
“You hear about people having doppelgangers, don’t you? People who’ve never met each other, but who look exactly alike.”
Shakily, Elise pointed to the man. “I drew him, earlier this morning,” she said.
“His face just came to me while I was walking Lulu on the marshes before work. It was extraordinary. The image was so vivid, it was as if he was standing there on the path in front of me. I came straight back here and sketched him.”
“Can I see?”
“I’ll go and get my sketchbook.”
She brought the sketchbook down and Sam pored over it. “That really is an incredible likeness,” he said. “And you’re sure you haven’t seen this picture before?”
“How could I have? It’s been covered over, hasn’t it? I haven’t seen it reproduced anywhere else. I haven’t seen any of Lilias’s paintings anywhere else.”
Sam shook his head, handing the sketchbook back to her. “Well, I don’t know how to explain it, then. Do you?”
“No. Except that . . . ever since I arrived here, I’ve felt as if . . . well, it sounds ridiculous, I know, but it’s felt as if the house is trying to communicate something.”
“As if it’s haunted, d’you mean?”
“I’m not sure. But the drawing you saw with the two women, for example.”
“The women I thought were sisters?”
“Yes. Sam, I can’t remember drawing them.
I mean, I must have, because I can see it’s my work.
But as far as I was concerned, I’d drawn a simple sketch of a vase of flowers.
No people in it at all. When you said about the women, I went to look, and I couldn’t believe it. It was as if they’d just appeared.”
He frowned. “Wow. Why didn’t you say anything at the time?”
“It sounded too odd, I guess. I didn’t really know you then. All of this sounds crazy. And . . . well, I have been a bit . . . well, not myself. Out of my mind with grief. So, I suppose I thought—”
“What does your husband say about it all?”
Elise flushed. It was a legitimate question, but the truth was, it had never entered her mind to tell Robbie about any of it because she’d known full well what his reaction would be.
“I haven’t told him about it, actually. I don’t think he’d . . .” Her voice trailed off in embarrassment.
“What’s the next step, d’you think, to find out about this boy?”
She told him about the museum outreach officer’s suggestion that she visit any local meetings for older village residents.
“That sounds like a plan,” he said. “And if I can do anything to help, let me know, okay? And let me know, too, if anything else strange happens. If I’m not here, give me a call. Any time. Promise?”
When he looked at her, obviously meaning what he said, Elise felt tears fill her eyes. She nodded. “Promise. Thank you, Sam.”