‘Oh yes, psittacosis,’ I say, the word popping into my mouth. ‘But I’m sure it can be cleaned up.’ I look around. ‘This must be such a lovely room in summer, all these windows, and the views over the garden.’ And the rubble of the porch. ‘But it doesn’t look as if Cousin Olivia has used it in ages. Where is she?’ I dread the answer.
Jem offers an unfamiliar word, then adds, ‘Hospital. Took a tumble and broke her leg.’
I feel an inner pang at the very word ‘hospital’. How I hate them. ‘Oh no. How is she doing?’
He gives me a humourless smile. ‘If you knew her you’d be more concerned about the nurses.’
‘Bit of a termagant, is she?’
‘She’m some heller.’
He makes a move towards the bird, which allows him to approach before lofting into the air and skimming past his head to the bookcase, where it sits making a noise like a cane hitting flesh. Clack, clack, clack. It sounds taunting, triumphant.
‘I’ll wring your neck one day, boy. Killed plenty chickens in my time.’ Jem turns back to me. ‘My missus keeps house for Miss Olivia but she won’t set foot in this room.’
Is he trying to change the subject? ‘Is the hospital far? I must go and see Olivia.’
Grasping the nettle, darling: well done.
‘Truro,’ he replies.
I remember passing Truro on the train – an attractive little city gathered around a cathedral in a dip between low hills. But it seemed to take ages from Truro to Penzance and the idea of making my way back to the station, then to the hospital in Truro and back again tonight is daunting.
Jem notes my despair. ‘There be a pub with rooms in the village, you can stay there overnight. Missus can take you into Truro to see Miss Olivia tomorrow.’
I think about this for a moment. I haven’t been able to work much these past months and there isn’t much in the bank. ‘If it’s OK I’ll stay here. Olivia said in her letter that the upstairs was pristine. Would that be all right?’
Jem makes a face. ‘Suit yourself, bird. If you’m staying, you can feed Gabriel. There’s food for un in the scullery.’
And with that he is off, leaving me alone. With the parrot.
Gabriel fixes me with a black regard.
‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’ I ask.
‘Fuck off,’ he says, so quietly it is almost an endearment.
‘You are very rude.’
I pick my way across the room between the splats of guano, but as I take hold of the door handle there is a titanic thud on my shoulder as Gabriel lands on me, his claws digging through my coat. When I scream the bird echoes my cry with perfect pitch, making my eardrums ring. Then he takes off again to land on top of his cage, where he sits and preens, as if this is a fine old game.
*
Now that Jem has restored the electrics, the hall is lit by an unshaded electric light, its illumination unforgiving. The mud of years has been ground into the tiles and runners; the floral wallpaper has faded to an unalluring palette of browns, like the husks of dead wildflowers. In the hall behind the staircase a silent longcase clock stands casting the shadow of a huge sentinel. I hear neither tick nor tock from it and the window into its innards shows a pendulum hanging motionless. It’s a handsome antique, but I am rather relieved it’s not working – is there anything eerier than late-night chimes echoing through an empty house?
Beyond the clock lies a series of closed doors. I open the first one and find a dining room full of big dark furniture, chinaware laid as if for dinner, like something off the Marie Celeste.
Opposite are two narrow doors. The first opens in a slant beneath the stairs and contains brooms and buckets and the half-ladder Jem used. When I try the neighbouring door I find it locked, the iron handle freezing, and chilly air seeps out around my wet feet.
At the end of the hall is a door held on a latch. I depress the catch, flick on the light switch – an old-fashioned brass one with a bobble on the end – and find a damp-smelling room containing an ancient range and a pair of stained, shallow copper sinks beneath a window. On the floor sits a metal tub of what appears to be verdigris-stained copper; pushed against the far wall is a strange contraption with a wooden handle, and beside it a tiled worktop upon which sits a dish of apples and a sack labelled ‘Pretty Boy Parrot Food’.
A channel cut into the floor leads to a door to the outside. To let water out? Or worse, blood? I shiver. The room is as cold as if it has absorbed a hundred winters. It is like stepping back into another century. But I am the one who feels like a ghost.
I go back into the hallway to explore further. The next door offers a kitchen of sorts, comprising a ramshackle collection of wooden cupboards, an old range, a butler’s sink and an armpit-high fridge bearing an Electrolux banner in a typeface no one has used in fifty years. The pale-blue interior contains complex mouldings inhabited by a milk bottle, something in a brown paper bag that turns out to be half a loaf of bread, a dish of butter, half a packet of chocolate digestives and some eggs. I lift the bottle and sniff it cautiously. How long did Jem say Olivia had been in hospital? Weeks? But there’s no mould, and it doesn’t smell sour. Someone has been using the kitchen, maybe Jem’s wife when she comes to clean the house. I am somewhat comforted: at least supper is sorted. The central door of the range is still warm to the touch and when I look inside I can see the glow of embers, as if someone has just been here, stoking it.
Once more I have the feeling of eyes upon me, and when I spin around I see above the wooden table a portrait of a young woman with a piercing black gaze. Her sleeves are rolled up and there’s some muscle on her forearms, which are folded: guarded and defiant. She’s wearing what appear to be men’s clothes and her face has an emphatic bone structure. I forget the eerie sensation, captivated by the skill of the artist. There’s a lot more texture in the painting than you’d expect, as if the oils have been laid on with a palette knife rather than a brush. The style is loose and daring, the application of light done in bold blocks of cadmium.
Continuing my explorations, I discover two further rooms, one entirely panelled with books, with a leather armchair pulled up beside an inglenooked woodburner; the other containing a camp bed covered in blankets and a candle-lantern on a makeshift table beside it. A pile of clothes in the corner are in need of a wash, and behind a hand-painted screen depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden there is an exceptionally large, but thankfully empty, Victorian Flow Blue chamber pot. My grin is short-lived as I remember the bit in the letter about the polar trek to the ‘privy’. Oh, dear God. I am overtaken by an urgent need to pee.
I run upstairs and open door after door. Bedroom. Bedroom. Box room. Bedroom. Linens cupboard.
No bathroom.
‘I am not,’ I say out loud, running back down the stairs, ‘using that bloody pot. I would rather die!’ My voice disappears into the empty spaces of the house.
From the front sitting room comes a sardonic cackle.
The scullery door gives out onto an unevenly paved area, the stone underfoot rosetted with lichen. In the falling gloom, through the still-falling rain, I spy a brick shed. I make a run for it and push the door open. Lurking within is a toilet of cracked porcelain. Spider webs drape the dark spaces between the high cistern and ceiling, map out territory between the bricks, festoon the toilet roll holder with its roll of shiny Izal. I shudder. Perhaps the pot after all? No: I simply can’t.