The Haunting of Harriet Read online

  CHAPTER 11

  Liz had gone up to bed oblivious of the drama unfolding downstairs. She fell into a delicious, dreamless sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. Being woken by hefty twins landing on her stomach a few hours later did not stop her from feeling fully refreshed and raring to go. Questions that had plagued her for years no longer hovered around her brain nagging her for answers. She knew where she was going and her journey was charged with a sense of purpose. It was the same feeling she had felt on the night of the millennium, only this time it came with an urgency that had been absent then. This was her time. She was on the brink of something new. The twins were nearly ten now and the main house was complete. The garden was looking good and was at last under control. Today work was about to start on the boathouse and hopefully by the end of the summer it would be finished. That just left the Fourth Room, which no longer confused her. It was her room now, it had accepted her at last and she would do it proud.

  Edward cooked a birthday breakfast comprising mainly toast, as all the bacon and eggs had been scoffed the night before. Next on the agenda was the ceremonial opening of the presents. Jenny was particularly excited about hers, but insisted it be opened last. James gave his mother a sable paintbrush as usual and The Pote half-presented her with a bone, which he immediately snatched back. There were theatre tickets from Edward and a book on famous gardens from Mel. At last it was Jenny’s turn. She had been hunting for months for a suitable and affordable gift. Her diligence had paid off: in the back of an antique-cum-junk shop she had found exactly what she wanted. Liz held the flat oblong package in front of her. She shook it, sniffed at it and prodded it, before carefully unwrapping it.

  “The lady in the shop said she had some others that were much better and older. One was dated 1670, imagine. But it was a bit scruffy and very expensive. Anyway, I liked this one best. It’s that song you’re always humming so I knew you’d like it. And it was a lot cheaper. Look, it’s signed 1939 so it’s still an antique.” Jenny leant over the arm of Liz’s chair, waiting for her mother to open her present. Liz tore at the wrapping. Inside the purple paper was a framed picture. Liz took it to the light for a closer look. The simple wooden frame held a small sample of stitchwork. The letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, had been embroidered around the text “Happy little bluebirds” and it was illustrated with an enormous rainbow whose abundant colours were upside-down and over which small, blue-coloured birds were flitting. It was not very accomplished but had enormous charm and a quirky quality that made it unique. Liz loved it immediately. “It’s perfect, Jenny, and I know exactly where it should live.”

  “But that’s not the best bit, Mummy. Take the back off. You’ll never believe it!” Jenny dashed forward to help speed things up.

  Tucked between the backing card and the sampler was a small black-and-white snapshot of a shy-looking man and a little girl. The child’s smile lit up the picture. Her cheeky beaming face, surrounded by a halo of wild thick hair, exuded utter happiness as it grinned from ear to ear and peered into the upturned face of the man on whose shoulders she was perched. The age difference implied that it was grandfather and granddaughter, but something told Liz it was a father and his child. Its tatty crumpled state left no doubt that this was a much loved image, one that had been visited time and time again. As she replaced the treasure she remembered a small picture of herself and her own father taken at Brighton. They were not dissimilar.

  “Goodness, Jenny, has this been hidden there all this time? Do you think this is the little girl who embroidered it? Look, there’s something written on the back: ‘To my little nightingale’. She must have sung this to him. Oh, Jenny. You are so clever to have found it.”

  “You haven’t spotted it yet, have you?” Jenny’s impatience was laced with incredulity.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” her mother asked.

  “You’ll have to find it yourself.” Jenny smiled that infuriating crooked smile of hers. “It’s truly amazing!” She was bouncing up and down, beside herself with excitement.

  Liz scoured the photo but all she could see was a dog-eared picture of a man and a child. The two figures were obviously in a garden. The man held the child high on his shoulders and they were laughing, looking into each other’s eyes, oblivious to anything around them. The photo was hardly bigger than an inch and a half by two. Liz held it close and peered hard. This time she looked beyond the main subject. The figures took up most of the shot, but behind them one could just see a stretch of immaculately striped lawn sweeping down to some water. On the far side of the water was a building. It was tiny, but there was no mistaking it. It was the boathouse.

  Everybody agreed it was an incredible find. Liz was overjoyed. Since last night she felt as though all the cares and doubts she had been harbouring had been blown away. Now this amazing coincidence confirmed her belief that everything was about to fall into place. It was such a stroke of luck. Jenny could have picked up any old sampler from any old shop, but to find this particular one was a miracle. Clutching her treasure, Liz marched across the hall to the Fourth Room. Pushing a pile of junk to one side she cleared a space in front of the inglenook then with great care she hung her precious sampler where it belonged; on the bird-shaped hook. This was just the beginning. While work was going on outside she would clear this room of its clutter and transform it into a quiet sanctuary; a place in which to dream.

  Harriet slipped her arm around Jenny. “Thank you, my darling. How can I repay you?”

  “You can teach me to sing!” was the child’s reply. Harriet had two pupils and two friends. At last her destiny had a nucleus: Jenny was taking centre-stage.

  Until now, Jenny had been content to explore and discover the physical world, a world filled with doing. The earth, the sky, everything around her, not to mention her own body, this had been more than enough to contend with. Now in her tenth year her receptive mind was developing as rapidly and noticeably as her physical self. Her young brain was ripe to explore abstract thoughts; to perform mental gymnastics, which were proving equally exciting as running, climbing or swimming. At school everything was labelled and divided into boxes, which frustrated her. Maths, History, Geography, Science, they were all treated as separate subjects, yet they had to be connected if her world was to make any sense.

  One night she lay awake with the thread of an alarming dilemma unravelling in her head. She was trying to imagine what it would be like to have been born without a birthday. She imagined being told she would have to wait to be born because there was no time slot for her. With this conundrum tying her brain in knots she burst into her parents’ room.

  “If this is now, when does it become then?” she asked. Liz pretended she was still asleep. Once Jenny got hold of an abstract idea she worried at it like The Pote with a bone.

  “Not now, darling, please. It’s the middle of the night. Come back in the morning.”

  “But that will be the future and I need to know now, while it is still now. Right now, before it’s the past.” She was shaking her mother in an attempt to wake her.

  “Go to sleep, kid.” Edward’s foot pushed at her from beneath the duvet. “Go! Now! Or you won’t have a future.” He turned over and tried to ignore her.

  “So what’s the difference between the past and the future? Do they swap places if you turn around?” Jenny waited. She was standing on the bed now, looming over her father, with her hands placed firmly on her hips. “Daddy, I really need to know. Are they fixed like West and East? Is there a magnetic time pole?” She was tugging at the duvet now.

  “I don’t know. Go and Google it or something!” Edward pulled the duvet over his head. Jenny turned on her mother, placing her face on top of Liz’s so that her hot, angry breath hit her.

  “Mothers and fathers are supposed to know these things. They’re supposed to impart knowledge to their offspring.” Her jaw was set firm. The terrier was challenging.

  “Most mummies and daddies d
on’t have a terrier for a daughter. Now go to bed. Go! That is an order! Go!” Edward made the last word long and drawn out to emphasize his point.

  Jenny slid off the bed onto the floor. She got to the door, turned and said, accusingly,

  “If I die in my sleep, still floundering in ignorance, you’ll be sorry.”

  “Don’t you be so sure!” replied Edward without moving.

  The next day Jenny was up at crack of dawn Googling time zones. She had already printed off several pages before her father’s dressing-gowned figure appeared.

  “Daddy,” she said. His heart sank at the prospect of a cross-examination before his first shot of coffee. He thought of retreating from the study, but decided to mount an attack and hopefully gain the high ground.

  “You didn’t die then?”

  “I decided not to.” She was deadly serious: “Daddy?”

  “Yes, my little terrier?”

  “Did you know that right now it’s a completely different time in New York? They are five hours behind us. We’re in their future, they are in our past. Isn’t that fascinating?”

  “Fascinating,” he said, with that tone of disinterest that children hate. Edward was still asleep. His body was crying out for caffeine and his daughter’s logic sent his thoughts spinning. How he had fathered such a child baffled him.

  “Listen, poppet,” he said trying to sound extremely interested, “that is so profound I shall have to give it some thought. Let’s talk about it later?” He raised his eyebrows and nodded at the child, hoping she would shrug her shoulders and agree. Sometimes it worked. Today it did not.

  “You see, you’re already putting it off till the future. If we all did that the whole world would grind to a halt.” The urgency in her voice was appropriate. “So stop procrastinating and get on with things!” She added a quick nod of her head as an emphatic punctuation mark.

  Edward’s pride did not take kindly to being beaten by a nine-year-old, even when it was his own child. “Now I’m really confused, Jen.”

  Jenny was standing with her strong legs apart, her hands on her hips, reminding him of a picture he had seen of Joan of Arc: the young warrior faced her foe and demanded to know why.

  “Well, because I’m not sure if that was an order or a request,” he explained.

  Jenny, quite unfazed, looked straight at her father and declared, “I should take it as advice, Daddy.” And she stomped off into the garden.

  Liz had been watching from the hall and remembered the young page on the Tarot card. It was so like Jenny, it was almost frightening.

  Time and the concept of time remained Jenny’s main obsession and school did little to encourage or explore such fascinatingly abstract ideas. She had conquered the concept of timelines. Man-made time was easy. It was the nagging question of when did the past become the past that sent her mind spinning out of control. If the future became now before it too became the past, when was now? Did it have time to exist or was it over before we realized it was here? Then there was the big question. Did the future ever change before becoming now, or was it fixed? Did it actually exist or was it an excuse to allow life to continue? Which led to the big question: was any time real or was it all man-made?

  The Pote was the only one that would listen to her for any length of time when she tried to externalize these difficult theories. On this November day they were sitting on the solid, new walkway that ran round the new boathouse. The rain had stopped and to Jenny the smell of the wet leaves contained the whole of spring, summer and autumn. She picked out some of the brightest, the crimson maple and acid-yellow sycamore, and laid them on the decking. She carefully moved them in formation, using them to illustrate her theory to a dog whose interest was being diverted by a pair of mallards. She was about to demand his attention when a short, sharp laugh made her stop the seminar. Embarrassed at being caught talking to herself, she shuffled the leaves and began humming. When she looked up it was not after all her mother who met her gaze but the lady from the Fourth Room: the lady who was going to teach her to sing.

  The first time the two of them had met was when Jenny was no more than a baby and had developed a dreadful fear of the dark. One night Harriet had listened long enough to the dreadful noises the child was making and had taken it upon herself to pacify her with a song. It had worked like a dream. The child fell asleep instantly and remained peaceful for the rest of the night. No one minded, in fact they seemed grateful, so Harriet had continued the practice until the child was no longer afraid of the night. Jenny had always been aware of this strange but kind person, although she did not know her name. She had never mentioned her to anyone else. It had not seemed relevant. The subject never came up for discussion so it had remained, albeit unintentionally, Jenny’s secret.

  The lady was tall and a lot older than Jenny’s mother. She wore a distinctive dark cloak draped over her shoulders. It was not fashionable but suited her well. In her hand she carried an ebony walking-stick with a silver handle. She looked rather arty and reassuringly familiar as she smiled at Jenny from a respectable distance. She was imposing, her crown of thick white hair held back by an ivory comb. Her eyes were liquid amber and although she looked ancient to a nine-year-old, her hypnotic gaze shone with the eagerness of youth.

  “Hello. I was eavesdropping. It’s unforgivable, I know, but it’s a hobby of mine. I hope you don’t think that was rude of me?”

  “I was only talking to my dog. Actually, I was talking to myself. It’s a bad habit.”

  “But enjoyable. I do it all the time.” The woman’s voice was rich, quite deep and made you want to listen to her. “I like your dog. He’s a dachshund, isn’t he? While she spoke The Pote sat calmly wagging his tail and looking straight at her.

  “This is The Pote. He really likes you. Normally he barks like crazy at strangers.”

  “That’s a good name. The Potentate: the omnipotent ruler.”

  “How did you know that?” Jenny was astounded. Nobody had ever guessed that before.

  “I often wonder about the concept of time myself,” she said, ignoring the child’s question.

  “Cool. Most grown-ups think I’m a pain. I do go on a bit.”

  “One has to go on if one is to get anywhere,” said the lady. “What is more, I think you’ve almost arrived.”

  “Have I? I’m still a bit muddled in here.” Jenny pointed to her head and laughed.

  The woman laughed with her. “Oh, I know that feeling only too well. But you are right. You were debating how long now lasts? I believe that now is all we have. Dream of it and it is yet to be; think about it and it is gone.”

  “It’s the past!”

  “Quite. So however fleeting life is we must live it, not waste it, and certainly never worry about the ‘now’ that is yet to come.”

  “That’s the future!” Jenny liked the way this woman thought. “That’s it exactly. Now is now and nothing else exists. I’ve got it,” said Jenny. “It makes perfect sense. Time doesn’t really exist. I knew it. Or, rather, I thought as much.”

  The lady got up and leaned against the wooden railing to stare out across the water. She began to sing. When she finished Jenny said, “That’s from the Wizard of Oz, isn’t it?”

  “I miss having someone to sing with. My father used to sing with me when I was a lot younger than you are now.” As the woman spoke, her face grew quite lovely and it was at that moment that Jenny recognized her as the little girl in the photograph.

  “Will you really teach me?” Jenny asked.

  “You’re a twin, aren’t you? I had a twin brother but he died.” She gestured for Jenny to join her and showed her how to stand tall and how to breathe, filling her lungs with air before turning it into sound. They spent the next hour standing tall and looking out over the lake singing together; the dark contralto weaving around the thin untrained soprano. Their voices carried across the water, across the lawn to the house, stirring distant warming memories as the sound soaked into the stone fabric
of the old building.

  Suddenly the lady turned to Jenny. “I have to go now. It’s time for my nap. We shall meet again soon,” she said. “Tell your mother I love the room and the boathouse.”

  “My name is….”

  “Jenny. Yes, I know. Goodbye. Come along, Pote.”

  The little dog abandoned Jenny and waddled off behind the black cloak. She watched them cross the lawn, the dog’s dwarf legs trying to keep up with Harriet’s enormous strides. Jenny checked her watch. At precisely five o’clock the two of them settled in the small armchair by the inglenook of the Fourth Room, where they slept for exactly fifteen minutes.

  After that first singing lesson Jenny and Harriet met regularly down by the boathouse. Unlike most adults Jenny had met, her new friend never dismissed ideas simply because they came from a child. They met on the same level. She told her pupil that to have lived longer was no guarantee of superior wisdom; and any knowledge was worthless unless applied with prudence and understanding. This was exactly the teacher Jenny had been waiting for. Their relationship was alive with the promise of things to come. Singing was the icing on an already rich cake.

  Jenny had always been able to hold a tune and had the gift of perfect pitch. Her voice was high and pure and called out for the discipline of a good teacher. Harriet was just such a teacher. She worked her pupil hard, and Jenny rose to the challenge. She loved singing and the more proficient she became the more she realized it was in her destiny to sing. Harriet knew this too. Those rare qualities she had possessed in her own voice were here in Jenny’s. With the right training and guidance she could reach the pinnacle of success. Already she poured her heart and soul into everything she sang, giving her voice a spiritual dimension that sets great singers apart from merely good ones. Her own career had not been meant to happen, but this young woman would not be thwarted in the same cruel way. It was not jealousy and not a desire to live her unfulfilled life through another that motivated Harriet. No, this young girl was linked to Harriet’s destiny, and the part she was to play in it was every bit as important to her as her own life.