The Empty Frame

“You could ask her,” said Sam. Then he added, “My feet were cold too. I put some socks on. It’s funny, how it suddenly went very cold. It was cold down in the Great Hall as well. And yet our dormitory’s a warm little room compared with the others, according to Cousin M. That’s why she’s put us up there. She said that Colonel Stickley was cross about it, apparently. He told her off. He said we should have been in one of the portakabins.”

The long oak table by the fireplace was set for breakfast with a checked cloth and neatly folded napkins. As Cousin M seated them all Colonel Stickley came in with a loaded tray. He presented an interesting contrast with Cousin M who was wearing her grubby gardening clothes of the night before. He looked very formal and very smart in a tweed suit with a waistcoat and a watch chain across it, a silk handkerchief tucked into the top pocket and brown brogue shoes polished to a mirror gloss. “He’s a bit of a smoothie, isn’t he?” Sam whispered to Floss, as they sat down. “What is he doing frying breakfast for us lot? Don’t they have servants in a place like this? Where’s the cook?”

Cousin M said, sticking spoons into pots of honey and marmalade and manhandling a very large teapot, “Let’s have a few introductions. Cecil, this is Sam, Floss and Magnus. This is Colonel Stickley, children.”

Embarrassed, and unused to formal introductions, the three of them made vague mumbling noises and took refuge in their bowls of cornflakes. “Stick insect,” thought Sam, watching the colonel’s long legs arrange themselves neatly under the table. The old man did not smile, nor did he look in their direction. The business of the moment was breakfast and he was concentrating on that.

Magnus, who was sitting with his back to the fireplace, thought he knew why Colonel Stickley was ignoring them all. It was because of the episode the night before. He’d been quite friendly in the end, in a stiff, grandfatherly way, helping him up to bed, but he was very different this morning. Magnus was determined to talk to him in private but he would have to find the right moment.

He chewed his cornflakes and ran his eyes along the rows of portraits. The Lady Alice Neale, in her black dress, was back in her frame. There were the thin, unkind lips and the cruel hands, there was the little dog. He did not dare look from the portrait to Colonel Stickley. It was obviously better for now to go along with the pretence that the two of them had never met before.

Instead he said, “Who is the big fat man?”

Colonel Stickley glanced along the rows of painted faces and removed a sliver of food from between his teeth. “His nickname is Burst Belly,” he said. “He was a monk, head of this place, once. He was in charge of the Black Canons. Henry the Eighth got rid of them and he didn’t much like it. So he put a curse on the Abbey, or so people say.”

Floss and Sam looked up at Burst Belly too. He was a huge and ugly man wearing the black and white robes of a priest. The white part of the costume was lacy and frilled like a Victorian night gown, incongruous under the flat silver cross which hung round his neck.

“Good name for him, wasn’t it, Burst Belly,” Cousin M remarked, buttering her toast thickly and heaping on the marmalade. “He obviously ate too much, like me. I do love food, don’t you?”

Floss said, “I don’t like his face. It doesn’t look exactly… well, holy, to me. It’s not the kind of expression you expect in a priest. Did he really curse the Abbey?”

“That’s the story,” said Colonel Stickley. “But who knows? It’s certainly had a sad history. If you look at all the families that have lived here, you’ll see that nobody stayed around for very long. Things tended to happen to people.”

“What sorts of things?” demanded Magnus, and his voice was unnaturally high and shrill. It was the voice he unconsciously seemed to develop when he was really concentrating on something. It irritated the other two.

“Shh, Mags,” said Floss, and pressed his foot under the table.

But Magnus seemed not to have heard. “That’s what you told us,” he informed Cousin M.

Cousin M blinked at him. “Me, dear? What did I tell you? I’m afraid you’ll have to remind me.”

“You said yesterday that Lady Alice did things she lived to regret; that’s exactly what you said, those were your exact words.”

Floss was now pressing down on Magnus’s feet just as hard as she could because she knew it was a dangerous moment. If they didn’t somehow change course, he would start crying, possibly even screaming. It had happened just once or twice, and it was frightening. It seemed to be something to do with the stresses of the awful life he’d had, shut away in the unfamiliar house with his sick mother, wondering what had happened to his father.

But Colonel Stickley, not knowing what was going on under the table, actually helped matters by glaring at Cousin M, rolling up his napkin and standing up. “End of subject,” he announced crisply. “Now then, I have a very busy morning, but if you’re prepared to come with me now I will show you a little of the Abbey, so you can get your bearings for the day.”

Cousin M said in a nervous voice, “Why don’t you let them go round on their own, Cecil? You’ve so much else to do and I’m sure they’d be happier poking round independently.”

Sam said, “We’ll be fine, sir, we won’t touch anything.” He was dying to get away from Colonel Stickley.

“I shall take you round,” he said frostily. “‘Poking about’, as you call it, is precisely what I do not wish to encourage,” and he produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. “The public still use this place from time to time, Maude, in spite of our present circumstances. There are all kinds of hazards in an old building like this. I’d like them to see exactly what’s what.”

“Very well, Cecil,” Maude said meekly, then, to the children, “I’ll be in my garden this morning, dears, if you want me. It’s the walled garden, beyond the dovecote at the end of the Long Walk. Otherwise, see you at lunch.”

“At twelve-thirty,” said Colonel Stickley, “and it’s… nine o’clock now.” He consulted a large gold pocket watch, tapped it and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. “I will meet you in the entrance hall in ten minutes, after you’ve rinsed off your breakfast crumbs. I shall go and do the same.”

Floss and Sam exchanged disappointed looks, shrugged silently at each other, then set off obligingly for their turret room. But Magnus lingered. In between the pictures of Burst Belly and the Lady Alice Neale was a tiny portrait of a young boy. Magnus hadn’t noticed it the night before but now sunshine was filtering through small leaded panes and a square of barred light was shining on it. He was almost certain that it was a boy, though the child was very prettily dressed in a lacy ruff and had longish golden curls. Between two fingers he held a white, many-petalled flower.

Magnus said, “Is that a peony?”

The Colonel glanced up at the little painting. “I wouldn’t know. Flowers are Maude’s department. Why?” he demanded quite sharply. “I must say you ask rather a lot of questions.”

Magnus was not put off. He was collecting information. “Well, she put some flowers like that in our room, and the cat knocked them over and broke the vase. Where is Arthur, by the way?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Cats aren’t my department, young man. Asleep somewhere, I suppose, it’s a nice life. I must get on, I’ve a great deal to do this morning. Rinsed your hands, have you?”

Ignoring this Magnus said, “Who is that boy in the painting? Is it a boy?”

“It is. And we don’t know. He might have been a son of the Lady Alice. She was married twice and she had several children. If it is a son of hers, then he wasn’t born here. He’s not in the parish records, and he’s not included in the family memorial, down in the church. Seen the church, have you? Rinsed your hands?” he repeated.

“Just going to,” muttered Magnus, but he didn’t. His hands were perfectly clean. Instead he went into the entrance hall and stood by the tapestries, Balaam’s donkey and its meeting with the angel, Pontius Pilate washing away his guilt. That set him thinking about the woman in the night again, the woman who’d cried, and about the misty coldness, and how Arthur had fled in terror. Who was the pretty child with the flower between his fingers, and who had smashed Cousin M’s vase of green glass and torn her peonies to pieces? He had come to a conclusion about Cousin Maude and Colonel Stickley. They were both pretending. Both of them knew that all was not well in the Abbey but neither of them was prepared to say anything. This thought rather excited Magnus, but it also made him afraid. He’d quite like to talk to Floss and Sam about it, but would they laugh at him? He suspected that the best person to talk to would be Colonel Stickley, if he could get him on his own, and in a good mood – if the old man ever had such things.

Colonel Stickley was obviously determined to show them as little as possible of “his” Abbey. He’d made it clear at the beginning that he thought of it as his, even though Mum had told them that it was Cousin M’s money which had saved it from being sold. It was obvious that they were not to see a lot of the rooms.

“What’s in there?” they kept asking, as he hustled them past intriguing doors bristling with ancient nails and bolts, and very firmly shut. “Can we just have a peep?”

“Absolutely nothing of interest”, the Colonel would say or “just household rubbish”, or “the domestic offices”. And the faster he hurried them on the more they wanted to linger and to explore.

What they saw were the public or “show” rooms; those rooms which were on view to possible clients, for firms to use when they held conferences at the Abbey – a money-making scheme which, like the sports centre, had almost ground to a halt.

“Why don’t people come any more?” asked Magnus.

Floss glared at him and Sam tried to get near enough to give him a kick. “Don’t keep going on about it, Mags, it’s tactless,” he whispered, holding him back as Colonel Stickley unlocked a door labelled “Council Chamber”.

But Colonel Stickley had heard. “Ask away,” he said. “We’re in a recession, young man, everybody is tightening their belts. People don’t have the money for luxuries any more. Our charges are high, naturally, because we give a very high quality of service, but there isn’t the money to pay for it. QED,” he added.

“‘As has been demonstrated’,” said Magnus. “‘Quod erat demonstrandum’.”

“Stop showing off,” Floss hissed at him. “It’s getting on my nerves.” In the atmosphere of the Abbey Magnus definitely seemed to be coming out of his shell and to be more confident. He was talking more and asking most of the questions. She supposed this was better than sitting in silence all the time but she was finding it irritating, particularly when he paraded his knowledge in front of Colonel Stickley.

But the old man didn’t seem to have heard. “I don’t mind the place being empty for a few months,” he said. “I quite like it to myself, actually. All those tennis-playing brats were beginning to get me down.”

“Thanks a lot,” mouthed Sam to Floss, as they stepped inside a large panelled room on one wall of which was a small bay window with a cushioned seat and a view of the river. There was another huge fireplace with a coat of arms above it.

“This room was improved,” he told them, “for the young Elizabeth the First. She was a friend of Lady Alice Neale. It’s not very likely she held councils here, but that’s why they enlarged it, just in case.”

“What a waste,” said Sam. He disapproved of the Royal Family. “It’s like putting new lavatories into places when the Queen’s only going to be there for about five minutes.”

“But even royalty has to go to the lavatory,” Magnus observed solemnly.

Floss started to laugh but the Colonel didn’t seem to notice. “They raised the floor in this room,” he said. “It would have been much lower, originally. They really did do their best to get the Court to come here. They were obviously very ambitious, and it worked. The husband became a major diplomat. Anyhow, that’s about it, really. Pleasant room for a spot of reading or sewing, not to mention the royal comings and goings. Come along then, we’ll do the lower floor next.”

Floss and Sam set off in front of him. They were bored with these empty rooms. “Do you think we could slip away?” Sam suggested. “He’s obviously not going to show us much else. I’d rather come back when he’s out of the way, when he goes off to London or something.” The gardens and the river looked much more tempting than this series of empty rooms and, so far as he was concerned, the sooner the grand tour was over the better.

As the Colonel pulled the heavy door shut behind them, Magnus, hanging back for a final peek, was aware of a rush of cold air. It was not the general cold of an ancient, thick-walled dwelling, that retained its delicious coolness on a day of sun, it was a more precise, sharp cold; it was enclosed in time, like a phrase of music, or a sentence. And he distinctly saw, as the closing door filled the sunlit space beyond, the figure of a woman moving across the Council Chamber from right to left. Her Elizabethan dress was pure white and round her neck hung a broad, black priest-like stole. She was carrying white gloves and she continually twisted them in her hands, as if they were a handkerchief. He could hear a sobbing noise. He was unable to see the apparition’s feet. These were cut off from his view above the ankle, as if the rest of her was moving along at a lower level, about a foot below his eye.

Magnus cried out, then clapped his hand across his mouth. The Colonel looked down sharply. “You all right, young man? Got a pain? Shouldn’t bolt your food, you know.”

He said, “You’ve just locked somebody in. There’s somebody in there, a woman. Listen, she’s crying, can’t you hear her?”

Colonel Stickley stared at him, grimaced, pulled at his moustache then stood very still. The sound, though muffled through the thick oak door, was the same sound that had woken him in the night, the anguished sound of inconsolable weeping that Magnus had been unable to bear. And he could not bear it now. He clapped his hands to his ears and screamed, “Stop it! Stop it, can’t you!”

The Colonel dropped his bunch of keys and shook him vigorously. “Come on now, no hysterics, there’s no need for that.” But his voice was quite gentle. This was the foster child, the boy whose father had walked out, never to be heard of again, and whose mother had lost her mind, the child who’d never had a childhood. “Wait there,” he said, and he limped off after Floss and Sam. “I just have to oil a lock,” he called after them. “Make your way down to the buttery. We’ll be with you in a jiffy.”

Coming back to Magnus he picked up his keys, unlocked the door of the Council Chamber and steered him into the room. “See for yourself,” he said, “go on, investigate. Climb up the chimney and pull up the floor boards. It’s all been done before, you know.” His voice, no longer brisk and soldierly, was wavering, that of a tired old man. It was almost as if he wanted to cry now.

Magnus stared into the room though he knew perfectly well that he would not see the woman in white. She belonged to another time, to a time when the floor of the Council Chamber had been lower. She had been walking on that floor which was why she had seemed to him to have no feet. These were the simple mechanics of ghosts. Magnus knew all about them from old Father Robert, whose church had once been inhabited by an unhappy spirit which he had laid to rest with his prayers. The mechanics were not what scared him, they were just about two kinds of time getting muddled up. What was frightening was how he felt about the two women – the one who had cried in the night and the one he had just seen gliding across this room. Each spectre had brought the awful coldness with her, a cold that went into his very marrow and felt like death. And the coldness was part of her pain, of the grief which troubled her so. In a way he didn’t fully understand, it was as if her pain had joined itself to his. He was suffering as well, which was why he’d had to stop the noise of the crying.

Were there two women or were they one and the same person – the woman in the night, who he believed must have been Lady Alice, because her frame had stood empty, and now this other woman, all in white? Magnus could not begin to work out what was happening. He felt as if the top of his head was coming off, through too much thinking.

A hand descended on to his shoulder. “As you see,” Colonel Stickley informed him, “the room really is empty. There is nothing going on here and there never has been. All this talk of ghosts is all silly rumour, put about by people who are trying to ruin my business because they want to get this place from me. Do you understand, boy… what’s your name?”

“Magnus.”

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