The Haunting of Harriet Read online

  The presence of men unnerved Harriet; the fact that they were strangers made their presence even more alarming. However, that she was by now a woman of a certain age afforded her some protection. Chivalry could not be that dead. As her fear began to subside, so righteous anger rose to take its place. This violation of her private space, her sanctuary, was unforgivable. Raising herself to her full height, and still holding her father’s cane aloft, she marched over to the intruders and challenged the older man to explain himself.

  “What are you doing in my house?” she asked.

  He ignored her. Worse, he pushed past her, pointing to the front door with his pen.

  “And that, I’ll have that stained glass before the bloody vandals get it. That’s early Victorian, possibly Regency; but I don’t expect you to care one way or the other. Just make sure they treat it with respect when they remove it. Better take the whole bloody door to be safe.” He was addressing the younger man: “And make sure the place is properly secured. I could get in here with a tart’s hairpin.”

  “Yeah, yeah, is that all?” The young man chalked a large cross on the mahogany door then measured it with his tape, writing the measurements in a notebook.

  The older man glanced around. “Yep, that just about covers it,” he said. “Oh, apart from that room.” He jerked his pen towards the Tudor room. “No one seems to have the key.” He studied his blueprint, refolding it and placing his pen back into his inside pocket. “Nice-sized room; not as large as some, but part of the original Tudor house. There’ll be some nice bits in there. Maybe even an inglenook. When did you last see a place like this that hadn’t been stripped bare? Good old oak fetches a fair whack on the antique market. We’re going to make a killing.”

  “Don’t be too greedy, Colin.” The taller man smiled in an unpleasant manner. Harriet wanted to smack him, but his next words turned her blood to ice: “Don’t forget you’re putting it on the market as a listed building. You’ve got to leave some original features or you’ll seriously devalue it. Even if it ends up as flats it’ll need a few original bits to pull in the quality punters.”

  The suited man was smirking. Harriet recoiled as he removed a none too clean hanky from his pocket, shook it and blew his nose loudly. “Bloody dust,” he said sneezing. “That’s the trouble with these old places, always full of bleeding dust.” He blew his nose again. Inspected the handkerchief briefly, then shook it again, ensuring the germs escaped, before screwing it up and thrusting it back into his trouser pocket. In a voice puffed up with self-satisfaction he said, “Anyhow, I’ve already made sure of a handsome profit, whatever this old house fetches. That orchard bit and the field… what did they call it - “the meadow”? Well, we’ll get six four-bed luxury detacheds in there. Then there’s that so-called boathouse. Imagine a lovely block of maisonettes overlooking that pond. We could even drain half and double our money. If I can get the woods at the back and put a road through here we’ll be millionaires by Christmas!” He chortled, took out his disgusting handkerchief, shook it and blew his nose again.

  Harriet retched. Had she heard this horrid little man, correctly? They were plotting to sell her property, her home, divide it up and desecrate it. Over her dead body!

  “Excuse me.” Harriet pushed between them, brandishing her stick in what she hoped was a threatening manner. “I don’t know if you are aware of the fact that this is private property. My private property, and I should like you to leave, now.” She placed herself between them and the front door, which she held wide. The men stared at the door as it swung open until it hit the wall. “Out, now, this instant or I shall call the police. Do you hear me? Out! Now!” She was shouting at the top of her voice, waving her stick above her head like a demented banshee. She lunged at the little man with her weapon. Thrusting it between his ribs she began to push him towards the door. He staggered for a second, then turned to look straight at her. Harriet gave him her most withering look, her amber eyes narrowing into slits.

  “What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Now that would be a good selling point.”

  The little man was nursing his ribs where he had knocked himself against the door knob.

  “Let’s get out of here. It’s giving me the creeps. The best thing to do with a dump like this is to tear it down and start again.”

  “Get out! Get out!” Harriet screamed at the top of her powerful voice, while still waving her cane above her head of wild white hair. Seemingly unflummoxed the men laughed, shook hands as if clinching a deal and left by the door Harriet was holding open. She slammed the door, locking it behind them and listened with distain to them as, laughing and chatting they walked across the drive, climbed into their cars and drove out. Then, to Harriet’s amazement, the younger of the two returned, pulled the heavy iron gates together and proceeded to secure them with a large padlock and chain. She listened for the sound of their cars to fade into the distance before running across the gravel to the gates. She tugged at the chain with all her might, but it would not budge. She was locked into her own property.

  Shaken, she returned to the kitchen and took a large cloth from beneath the sink. Still clad in her outer shoes and cloak she stomped off around the house. Each time she found a white cross she wiped it out, releasing a snort of disgust as she did so. How dare they trespass on her land, enter her beloved Beckmans and proceed to vandalize it? At least they had left when she ordered them out; but how rude of them not to introduce themselves, or even acknowledge her existence. That was discourteous in the extreme. On returning to the hall, having erased thirty-two of the offensive crosses, she made sure the front door was locked and bolted top and bottom. If she could not get out then surely no one could get in. She entered the security of her kitchen and put on the kettle and the radio.

  After the “invasion”, Harriet moved all her personal possessions downstairs. She had grown nervous of stairs since her fall and it seemed logical to restrict herself to the kitchen and the Tudor room, from where she could monitor any activity at the main entrance. The unwanted visitors had unnerved her. As a precaution, a new ritual was added to the twice-daily tour of the house, involving checking and re-checking the locks. She reclaimed the keys from the drawer and carried them in a large noisy bunch clipped to her belt. She slept with them beneath her pillow, checking on them several times each night. Often when passing through the kitchen to embark on her garden patrol her eyes strayed to the ledge above the door and she thought of the great iron key that protected the Tudor room. A smile would creep across her face as she relished the knowledge of having thwarted those two horrid men by denying them access to her private world.

  The next morning Harriet tried to slot back into her simple routine of gentle walks around the house and garden, frugal meals, painting and, of course, music. Her voice was still good, still rich in those dark tones developed during her brief training at school. Harriet took no pride in her voice. To her it was a gift involving neither fame nor fortune. To the outside world her life might well be deemed a failure. “Promising, talented, young woman turns into sad, solitary recluse.” She never let herself think in this way, not seeing herself as special but one who shared a unique importance with every other human being. This marvellous, common yet exclusive attribute equipped her to fulfil her role, her destiny. Even those painful black days in the past had combined to make her who she was today: a stubborn tenacious woman, with a formidable character that had borne her through such a tragic and traumatic childhood and would equip her to deal with whatever future lay in store.

  Then one night she dreamed the strangest dream. Having fallen down a rabbit hole she was confronted by Tweedledum and Tweedledee bearing a remarkable resemblance to the two discourteous developers. Grabbing a croquet mallet she proceeded to batter the two idiots about their over-large heads. With each strike they bowled over, only to bounce back, until all that remained were two enormous heads rolling around in the hall while she rode on the back of an iron hobby-horse with the head of
a griffin, singing at the top of her considerable voice. The noise of her whacking, and their shrieks as each blow struck home woke her.

  From outside the whirring and droning of a generator combined with the general din of heavy machinery and men’s voices. The view from her window revealed that the gates had been swung open. Hurriedly dressing, she rushed to the kitchen, muttering to herself as she went, “Keep calm, Harriet. There is nothing to be afraid of. Take a deep breath. You have right on your side.” She grabbed her cloak and armed with her father’s cane marched into the garden.

  As she approached the orchard the light summer rain was turning into an unseasonably heavy storm. By now her blood was up and she was impervious to the weather, feeling ready for a fight. The wind lashing against her face was stimulating and the wild conditions presented a fittingly dramatic backdrop. She thought of lying low and conducting a recce, but shrugged this off as the behaviour of wimps. So her tall, black figure strode on, carried by determined legs. On reaching the red-brick wall encircling the orchard she was brought to an abrupt halt. Part of the wall was still standing but close against it stretched a hideous length of plastic-coated chain-link. The sturdy metal posts had been cruelly driven in with no thought for the roots of the old espalier peach trees that Tom Pritchard had so loving planted in the shelter of the warm bricks. The archway that for centuries had served as the entrance, covered by the reddest of scented roses, had been reduced to a heap of rubble, the petals of the flowers mixing in the mud with the ancient dust of the red Pluckley Stock and the ghastly metal barrier that stood in their place.

  “Who has done this? I dare you to show yourselves, you cowards!” Harriet cried, as she tugged at the intransient posts. No amount of wrenching or kicking would move the monsters. She glared about her, amber eyes alive with the fire of betrayal. “I know who you are. It’s you two horrid little men: Tweedledum and Tweedledee. This has your handiwork written all over it. It’s the white cross syndrome again. Well, this time you’ve gone too far.” She turned and, throwing her cloak around herself in a dramatic gesture, strode back to the house.

  After a soothing cup of Earl Grey she was quieter but no less angry. Each determined step back had sent her anger deep inside her. The dreaded chain-link stretched from the coach-house, around the front of the orchards, then ran the full length of the garden until it reached the old boundary across the beck. Her garden was being divided up into plots. They had paid no heed to the natural lines of the planting. Bushes and shrubs were randomly left on either side of the straight divide; some were actually cut in half as the unbending monster claimed its passage.

  “They must have been here all night. They are stealing my home right under my nose, inch by inch,” she said. “This is harassment. They want me out so they can take the lot. Well, they don’t know what they have taken on.”

  Underlying her defiance was a fear that she was losing her once-sharp mind. Could she have signed something without reading it properly? She would have remembered a visit from Mr Kepple. Her short-term memory was getting bad lately but not that bad. What if she was suffering from Alzheimer’s, how would she know? Women like her were preyed on by unscrupulous developers. Was it possible that she had signed away her land?

  “Never!” Harriet spat out the word. She paced around the kitchen, picking up pots and pans, only to bang them down again in a temper. As she began to calm down, the thought occurred to her that it might be time to think about reducing her responsibilities. Would it be so awful if she only had access to the rear garden? She was telling herself only the other day that it was getting too much to walk around the whole estate every day, twice a day. Maybe selling off part of the land was the sensible thing to do, the rational approach.

  That night Harriet retired exhausted from hours of reflecting on her situation. Should she fight to keep the house as it was? Should she sell off part of the land? Or should she consider moving out altogether? Was fate telling her to move on? Had the time arrived when she should hand over to the future generations? With all this swirling around in her thoughts she fell into a fitful sleep that left her feeling more exhausted than when she had gone to bed. Dreams began to float in and out of her head too quickly to take form, evaporating before she could recall them in the exasperating way that dreams do. Something was telling her to stay. In her dream it had been so obvious. It worried her that she could not recall it. “Hark at me, stupid old fool. It was a dream, for God’s sake, just a stupid dream!” Telling herself off in her usual way she dismissed the thoughts with a short laugh and prepared for her constitutional.

  Although just a dream, or fragments of a dream, the notion of purpose was renewed in Harriet. Having to defend it, to justify and explain her belief in her as yet incomplete destiny, somehow restored her fervour. Her determination to cling on to her house went far deeper than her love for the property. This sense of mission, ridiculous and grandiose as it seemed, was compelling. It was her duty to maintain Beckmans for future custodians, who should inherit it in all its glory, not reduced to a shadowy apology. That was part of her purpose and on its own was enough. Now that she had interpreted her dream to her own satisfaction, Harriet’s resolve to fight on was unshakable. Having even so much as entertained the notion of moving made her laugh. No, she would never surrender her home. Re-development? Ha! She was having none of it.

  “So they think I’m losing it, do they? Well, there is nothing wrong with my mind. This is my land, Beckmans land, and no one is going to carve it up like a Christmas goose. I won’t sit back and watch them wreck the place. Over my dead body! I never signed anything over to anyone. Huh, as if I would, barmy or not!” She snorted with indignation and flounced off to the sanctuary of her room. Soon the sound of Harriet singing at the top of her remarkable voice resounded through the much relieved house.

  The property had indeed been sold, all legally overseen by Harriet’s solicitors. For the time being work was being done only on the surrounding land. Each morning at some ungodly hour, Harriet was woken by the din of earth-moving equipment knocking down walls and causing general havoc. Bulldozers crashed through regardless of the destruction left in their wake and teams of rowdy men with their jeans hanging down below the point of decency dug, hacked and laboured, creating a mud-bath out of Eden.

  At first Harriet hid away in wilful ignorance of what was happening to her beloved home. Then one night she retaliated. Armed with a pair of stout wire-cutters she attacked the invidious chain-link and discovered the sweet taste of revenge. Each night she ran her one-woman vigilante army to halt their progress. She became expert in sabotage, destroying engines, slashing tyres and siphoning diesel, generally impeding the building work. Deep down she knew she was no more than an irritant, a flea on the back of the animal she wanted to destroy; but after a few months it became a game that Harriet enjoyed playing. The original reason for the war was forgotten and she became immersed in the battle to outwit her main protagonists. Tweedledum and Tweedledee arrived regularly to survey and assess the damage. Harriet derived great satisfaction from witnessing their frustration and distress. They assumed it was down to local vandalism, which it was. The police quickly lost interest, leaving Harriet free to continue her wrecking game unimpeded. It was when matters became personal with the tyres of his Jaguar being slashed that Tweedledum opted not to appear on site in person, which rather took the fun out of it for Harriet.

  Despite nearly a year of intensive battle, the development was completed. All was quiet once more. The coach house and the orchards had given way to six detached mock-Georgian houses, and new families moved in, unaware of what had vanished to make way for them. Harriet adjusted remarkably well and quickly. She never left by the front door these days, so the only difference was that her daily tour of the garden was considerably shorter. The perimeter shrubbery had gone, devoured by the new gardens next door. Now as a survival technique she saw only what she chose to see. In her mind’s eye Tom’s handiwork was all around. She did not notice the
grass was knee-high and the terrace covered in moss and weed. The nut tree had grown enormous and saplings grew unchallenged where the squirrels had planted their hoard. All the paths had vanished, covered by thick green moss and grass and the wisteria occupied half of the side terrace and much of the upstairs rooms. The red brick wall with its arch was covered in summer with scented roses. She did not see the withered vines in the greenhouses because to her they were full of the ripeness of summer and the hives still buzzed with activity and sweetness. The lawn swept down to the lake in straight stripes of light and dark and the ruin of the burnt out boathouse stared back complete across the water.

  Then a simple knock on the door changed everything. Her reason for clinging on so tenaciously made sense. The entry of the Jessops had transformed Harriet’s life, propelling her into the twenty-first century, where she had been living life in their slipstream ever since. It had never been so vibrant, so full of shared joy. So why, even now at the age of seventy-five, was she still asking the same questions? If fate had not finished with her, it had better get a move on. She was not getting any younger. She laughed at the thought of being asked to question her own existence. Was she really being told she had not lived all those years of emptiness? All that battling to protect Beckmans from destruction, was that a figment of her imagination? How dare anyone suggest such a thing? According to Mel she had ceased to exist thirty-five years ago. Harriet threw back her head and laughed. Life was many things but it was real, of that she was certain. Harriet took herself off to the Tudor room. It had been a funny old day, a busy day full of memories and surprises. Tomorrow was Liz’s birthday and work would start on the boathouse. “Ah, well, life goes on,” she said out loud and guffawed as she realized the irony of her remark.