Chapter 2 A Mysterious Picture
Indeed, I saw exactly what he meant.
The girl in the picture had fair hair that was shorter than mine and wore it pinned at one side, but it was wavy like mine.
Her finely painted features were mine, too.
Her large blue eyes were full of fun and her small mouth looked as though she was trying not to giggle.
I’ve seen photographs of myself with her expression.
‘She does look a bit like me.’ I gave a dry laugh. ‘Who is she? Some long-lost relative of mine?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but it’s an interesting idea.’ He reached and unhooked the painting from the wall, then held it between us so that the light fell on it. A pendant hung round her neck in the shape of a little bluebird.
‘This is the artist,’ Kyle said, pointing to the letters ‘T.F.’ in the bottom right-hand corner.
But when he turned the painting over, there was nothing written on the torn brown backing paper.
‘I found it in one of the attics,’ he said, replacing it on the wall, ‘and hung it here where there was an empty hook.’
We stood staring at it thoughtfully for a moment. It gave me a strange feeling. Kyle must have felt it, too, for he said, ‘I know – I wonder if Aunt Julia can solve the mystery.’ He lifted it off its hook again.
I hesitated, but he insisted that I accompany him. ‘You’d better stop recording though,’ he said, and I quickly fiddled with the phone. ‘I should warn you about Aunt Julia… Well, she lives in the past. And she’s not keen on my plans for opening the house.’
It was with a feeling of dread that I followed Kyle down the gloomy corridor that we’d passed earlier.
I’d seen too many scary films in my time and Julia sounded a bit frightening.
However, when he knocked on the door at the far end, the response from within was not some ghostly whisper but an elderly woman’s high-pitched, ‘Come in!’ And when he pushed the door open, instead of finding a dark lair, I stood blinking in a splash of daylight and felt the friendly warm tongue of the little brown dog Jess licking my hand.
We had entered a large, high-ceilinged bed- sitting room situated at a corner of the house.
I glanced round with pleasure. The chirps and whistles of a pair of budgies in a cage by the window were cheering.
As was the fire crackling beneath a carved wooden mantelpiece.
The pair of light blue fireside chairs matched the colour of the curtains and the quilt on the single bed.
Through a doorway, I glimpsed a tiny modern kitchen with pot plants on a windowsill.
‘Hello, Aunt Julia,’ Kyle said very clearly to a slight, elderly woman, who was easing herself up from one of the chairs. ‘This is Amy, who’s going to write about Farthington House for a magazine. There’s something we wanted to ask you.’
‘You’re from a magazine?’ Julia peered anxiously at me through a faded version of Kyle’s blue eyes. She was little, with a narrow, pointed face half hidden by untidy silver hair. ‘What magazine?’ Her voice quivered and she played nervously with her hands.
As I described Our Heritage, Julia looked more and more alarmed. I remembered Kyle’s warning about her disapproving of his plans.
‘Don’t worry, we haven’t come about that,’ Kyle cut across me.
‘I wanted to ask you about this.’ He held up the painting of the girl.
Julia reached for a pair of spectacles. As she stared at the picture, a curious expression crossed her face.
She looked up at me, then back at the picture.
Suddenly, she sank down in her chair again, her shoulders hunched, and stared into the fire.
Sensing her mood, the dog nosed her with a gentle whine, but getting no reaction, retreated to its basket by the bed.
Kyle sat in the chair opposite Julia and leaned towards her, the portrait in his hands. ‘Do you know who this is? I don’t mean to upset you, but Amy is interested. Because of the likeness.’
Julia glanced at me once more with an expression of deep dismay, then seemed to come to a decision.
She rose stiffly, steadied herself, then went over to a chest of drawers, on which several framed photographs were grouped around a vase of chrysanthemums. She selected one and brought it back to show us.
‘This is my mother with me,’ she told me with pride.
‘Diana,’ Kyle told me knowledgeably as I took the photograph and studied it. It was of a rather sullen-faced woman with heavy dark hair swept up in a 1940s hairdo. She was holding a shy-looking toddler in a smocked dress.
‘Taken just after the war. I must have been three there.’
I didn’t think Diana looked a happy mother but obviously didn’t say this. I handed the photo back, wondering at its importance. Julia sat with it in her hands, lost in thought. She was not someone, it seemed, to come quickly to the point.
‘Aunt Julia?’ Kyle said gently.
She met Kyle’s eye. Her voice, when it came, was unexpectedly sharp. ‘She upset my mother greatly.’
‘Who did, Julia? This girl?’ He tilted the painting to show her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, her distress deepening.
‘Did you know her?’ I asked and she shook her head. It was frustrating, like a game of twenty questions where only yes and no answers were allowed.
Kyle and I exchanged glances. He paused, then tried again. ‘You know who she is or was?’
‘Yes, but if anyone mentioned her name, it put Mummy in a rage. Poor Mummy. Nobody understood her except me. I knew how to calm her.’
Julia’s mother must have been something of a tyrant, I thought. Or very distressed for some reason.
‘Aunt Julia looked after her mother for many years, didn’t you, Julia?’ Kyle said brightly. He sounded out of his depth.
Julia nodded.
‘When did she… pass away?’ I enquired.
Touchingly, tears filmed Julia’s eyes. ‘It’ll be twenty-five years next Thursday and nearly fifty years since my father left.’
I quickly calculated: 1999. ‘An important anniversary for you,’ I said softly and she nodded.
‘I’ll go to the church and light a candle for Mummy. Put flowers on her grave. She loved red roses, but there are never any roses this time of year.’ She looked sharply at Kyle.
‘We can find some roses, Julia,’ he assured her.
‘Is your father buried there, too?’ I ventured.
‘Oh no, they wouldn’t do that.’ This answer puzzled me. I imagined there had been some estrangement.
What had happened to Julia, I wondered, to make her so on edge? But we were no closer to finding the identity of the girl with the bluebird pendant. I glanced enquiringly at Kyle, who nodded slightly in reply and tried again.
‘Who is this, Aunt Julia? It would be helpful to have a name.’
Julia squeezed her eyes tight and breathed in, apparently working up to an answer. ‘Her name,’ she said finally, ‘was Bird.’
‘Bird,’ I echoed. The name was unusual and meant nothing to me.
‘After my father left, Mummy and I moved back here with Uncle Andrew…’
‘Christopher’s father,’ Kyle reminded me. ‘Diana’s elder brother.’
‘And I heard her arguing with him about this picture. She didn’t want to have to see it every day. One minute it was hanging in the dining room, the next it had gone. Where did you find it, Kyle?’
Kyle explained and she nodded.
‘But who was Bird?’ I persisted.
‘Mummy and Uncle Andrew’s little sister, of course,’ Julia said.
So the girl in the portrait was definitely a Rutherfurd!
Kyle looked confused. ‘I thought there were only three of them. I mean, I found a family tree Christopher drew up. His father, Andrew, your mother, Diana, and their sister Esme. John Rutherfurd’s children.’
‘Esme, that’s right,’ Julia said, brightening. ‘Her real name was Esme, but everyone called her Bird.’
Kyle looked thoughtful. ‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve seen the name Esme on the family tree, but haven’t able to find out anything more about her.’
‘Something happened,’ Julia mumbled. ‘I don’t know what, but Bird left. Whether she was sent away or went of her own accord, I don’t know. Mummy didn’t like to talk about it.’
Julia wouldn’t look at us and I sensed she was hiding something.
‘And now,’ the old lady said abruptly, ’I’ve had quite enough and Jess needs to visit the garden.’ We were dismissed.
Mummy didn’t like to talk about it. It was these words that haunted me as we left Julia lacing her outdoor shoes and calling to her dog.
Kyle returned the portrait to its place on the nursery wall and we trooped downstairs in silence. In the hall, he turned to me. ‘Aunt Julia’s rather extraordinary, isn’t she?’
I said politely, ‘Quite a character.’
‘Dominated by her mother,’ he sighed. ‘She can’t have had much of a life, poor woman. Seems perfectly happy in her little hideaway, though.’
‘Yes.’ I bit my lip. ‘I’m glad we’ve found out who the girl in the portrait is.’
‘Clearly the likeness is a coincidence.’
‘Of course it is.’ Our families were both local, though. Perhaps there was some connection.
Just then we heard the click of a door closing upstairs, followed by the tick of a dog’s claws, then the sound of another door before silence fell once more.
‘They go down the servants’ stairs,’ Kyle reminded me.
‘Julia hates the idea of members of the public visiting the house, but I don’t think she’ll come across them much. ‘
‘No,’ I said.
‘So. You’ve seen the house. What happens next?’ He slid his hands into his trouser pockets and I heard the impatient clink of coins. We were back to business.
‘I speak to my editor,’ I said, ‘and I suppose we go from there.’ I saw the disappointment in his face and added hastily, ‘The house is extremely interesting, I mean that.’ But I badly needed to think of an approach to please Amaya. ‘When are you thinking of opening?’
‘Very shortly, I hope,’ he said, cheering up. ‘There are a lot of signs to put up and I’m still designing the guidebook, but I’ve been through all the legal stuff and am otherwise ready to go. I’ll just need to organize publicity.’
‘Of course. I’ll be in touch.’
He handed me my coat and I felt sure he was watching me as I set off down the path, but when I glanced back the door was firmly closed.
Out on the street, I lent briefly against the wall, regaining my bearings. The clock on the old church was striking twelve and a young man walked past me talking on his phone. I was back in the real world. I sighed then quickly read my messages.
Perhaps, I thought as I returned to my car, there was some story about the house’s former occupants that I could work up.
The most promising lead was Bird, the girl in the portrait, but Kyle didn’t know much and it seemed unlikely I’d get anything more out of Julia about her. Perhaps I’d do a little research.
The fact that Bird looked like me was probably a coincidence, but the picture had made me uncomfortable.
It was tangled up somehow with my childhood impression of Farthington House.
It was too late to ask Gran anything, too late to ask Mum.
There was only Dad left and I ought to get back to him.
I started the car engine and pulled away, glad to be free of the house.