The Cheesemaker's House (24 page)

We meet Christopher in the churchyard and already he has the funeral all worked out.

“As long as the weather holds so we can dig the grave we ought to be able to fit it in before Christmas. I thought we could put the baby in front of the east window, where the other children are buried,” he says.

Owen shakes his head. “It's the wrong place.”

“The wrong place?”

“Yes. It needs to be near the yew hedge by the kissing gate.”

“Owen, I'm not sure...”

But Owen interrupts him. “Come on – I'll show you the spot.”

Owen leads us around the back of the church. The grass is still damp from last night's frost and I wish I was wearing my wellies and some thick socks. There is a cinder path to the kissing gate and I hop onto it, but Owen makes a beeline for a spot on the edge of the empty space, just under the hedge.

He turns to Christopher. “Here.”

“But Owen, I'm not sure this land is even consecrated.”

“It's in the churchyard, why would it not be?”

“There's sometimes an area left for those who can't be buried under church law; non-believers, suicides, that sort of thing.”

Owen looks puzzled. “You're sure it's here?”

“Well yes, I always understood it to be this empty patch of land.”

“This plot is right on the edge of it though.”

“Yes, I know, but...”

“It's the right place.” I say it very quietly and they both turn to look at me. “The first Sunday I was here – I left part way through the service and I saw a woman kneeling at a grave just there, and it was freshly dug. It must have been the start of it all, only of course I didn't realise. I convinced myself it was a trick of the light.

“I wonder…perhaps it's where Thomas is buried? I know his death wasn't recorded as a suicide but that's what it was. Maybe there was some sort of compromise about where he was buried – the vicar spoke up for his good character, so maybe…but of course, we'll never know.”

“Oh, but we might.”

We both look at Christopher.

“There are plans of the churchyard that show where the burials are. The recording can be a bit sketchy and I'm not sure they go back that far, but you never know. Come on – they're in the vestry.”

The vestry is rather too small for three people so I ask Christopher if he has the parish register for the very end of the seventeenth century and I take it through to the church while he and Owen start their search of the burial records.

The daylight is already beginning to fade so I flick one of the switches next to the vestry door. A pool of harsh electric light illuminates the area closest to the altar. The crib is now in its place but I ignore it and sit down in the front pew, setting the register on seat beside me. This is the place to find out if Thomas Winter had any brothers or sisters.

The book ends in 1703 and I work backwards. In 1701 I come across the death of a John Winter, aged forty-one years, so probably a relation but certainly not a sibling. The next Winter I find is Thomas's birth – the very last entry in 1699, on 31
^st
December. A child born on the very turn of the century – was that perhaps part of the reason he was considered to be special?

I turn the pages over quickly; I doubt there would be a sibling in the same year. But there is an entry – in late May. The marriage of Sarah Beckford to John Winter. Sarah was just sixteen years of age, her husband thirty-nine. It looks as though Thomas was an only child.

I try to picture Mother Winter as an innocent teenager made pregnant by a much older man. But somehow the image doesn't fit. At that tender age did she already have her exceptional gifts? Was it the child she really wanted, to carry on the line? Is that what she wants now?

My gaze travels to the crib and I put the book to one side and wander over to it. The wooden shepherds and kings that Jane and I so carefully washed are settled in the straw, along with the little woolly sheep, placed there by excited chubby hands. Watched by their proud mothers. What must it be like, to be a mother? I am thirty-five and I don't know. But I want to know, and the ache inside me is real in a way it hasn't been since I found out about Neil and Angela's baby.

I try to sweep it away but I can't. I have to turn from the crib, and as I do so, something catches my eye. Half way down the church, just in front of the font, a woman wearing a grey dress is kneeling in prayer. I am transfixed – it is Alice. Her head is bowed and she is completely unaware of my presence. If indeed I am present for her – do the echoes through time travel both ways?

“He's here – he's underneath the altar,” I breathe.

She raises her head, and as I lift my arm to point to where her baby is resting, the vestry door clicks open behind me.

“We've found the boundary – the plot is just on the consecrated side, but as far as knowing who's buried...” Owen tails off. He has obviously seen Alice too.

“Tell her, Owen, tell her where her baby is,” I whisper.

I don't know if he hears me but he sets off across the church. I watch, spellbound, as he walks up to her. She turns towards him and her sad face is illuminated by a smile – she knows him, that is clear – but does she see Owen, or Thomas? He stops at the end of her pew and I can see his face in profile, full of tenderness.

Christopher is behind me. “Who's he talking to?” he hisses.

“Alice.”

“You can see her?”

“Yes.”

“That's incredible,” he breathes. “For me, there's no-one there.”

His words bring home the awful unreality of the situation. I feel myself go hot, then icy cold, and the muscles in my legs begin to tremble as though I have no control over them. I don't. I need to sit down but I cannot move, and when I try to I feel myself falling.

Christopher stops me hitting the floor but I am panicking now, gasping for breath. This cannot be happening; not to me. Then all of a sudden Owen's arms are tight around me.

“Make them go away,” I sob, “please, make it all stop.”

He buries his face in my hair, saying my name over and over again. Or is it my name? Or is it hers? But his voice and his arms calm me, and he takes me home and puts me to bed. And later, for the first time in almost forever, we make love.

I wake from my doze when Owen strokes my cheek. The pool of light from the bedside lamp illuminates the top half of his face but his lips are in shadow as he reaches forward and they touch on mine with the gentlest of kisses.

“I'm going to have to leave you for a little while,” he whispers, “I promised I'd pick Adam up at the station.”

“Are you going to tell him what's happened?”

“I don't think so. I'll just drop him off and come straight back here, if that's alright.”

I prop myself up on my elbow. “Of course it's alright for you to come back – once you've told him.”

“Alice, not tonight. I...”

“Yes, tonight. He's worrying himself sick over you. He's heard you talking to Mother and he's seen how stressed you are. He thinks you're going mad and he's terrified for you.”

“He told you all that?”

I nod. “At the leisure centre on Wednesday.”

“And you still wanted to see me?”

I nod again.

“Alice, you are the most amazing person. I don't deserve you.”

“Well you've got me – I love you, remember? Now, are you going to do as I ask?”

He looks away. “I'm such a coward. Will you…will you tell Adam with me? I just feel stronger when you're around. I know that sounds pathetic, but I can't help it.”

I wrap him in my arms. “It's not pathetic and it's not surprising you need some sort of support after what you've been through. Tell you what, you collect Adam from the station and I'll have a shower then wait back at your place. I might even bring a bottle of wine.”

Owen looks at me gravely. “I think that could be very helpful.”

So I sit and wait in Owen's kitchen, William stretched out along the radiator next to me and Kylie curled in her basket. Their breathing is the only sound, apart from the tick of the clock in the hall, but the silence is soothing. I have already opened the wine and helped myself to a glass.

I wander into the living room and study the china animals on the mantelpiece. Black cats with long elegant necks guard either end, seemingly uninterested in the blue tit, robin and field mouse between them. Whoever arranged them didn't consider the natural order of things. Unless they had a highly developed sense of irony, that is.

I know nothing about Owen's grandmother, not even her name. Yet she is all around me, shouting from the antimacassars, the ticking clock, the Lladro geese, to be discovered. I go back into the hall and pick a walking stick out of the stand. The knotted wood has been polished to a high gloss and it is very long. She was clearly a taller woman than me.

There is one place in the house where I can find out more about her than any other. I glance at the clock – Adam's train is due in about now so I have very little time. As I consider it I receive a text from Owen saying the train has been delayed by twenty minutes. I bound up the stairs.

Even with the light on the room is full of shadows. The wardrobe crowds in on me and in defiance I open its doors first. To my surprise it is full of Owen's clothes; white shirts to the left, blue and striped ones to the right, separated by a row of chinos and a suit carrier. Beneath them are neat piles of polo shirts, jumpers and jeans. Boxer shorts and socks are squeezed into a corner.

This isn't what I came to see. I perch on the bed and pick up the photograph on the night table. It is Owen's graduation captured in black and white. He looks so young it makes my heart ache; almost still a schoolboy in his gown and hood.

Standing next to him is a woman in a pale tailored suit. Like Owen, she is slim and neat, but she is a few inches taller than him which would make her almost six foot. I check the shoes – dark courts – not much of a heel. They look as though they match her handbag.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this; she was a charmer, a healer, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of herbs and their folklore – here she is dressed as a suburban grandmother. I peer for clues in her face but it is largely hidden by the brim of her hat.

My fingers spread out on the candlewick beside me, tracing the ridges and valleys. A slam echoes through the house and I jump up before I realise it is next door, but I am on my feet now and I prowl along the dressing table while I pluck up the courage to open a drawer.

Again, a typical grandmother; a bar of Yardley's English Lavender soap nestles on top of a pile of underwear. Stately bras and substantial polyester knickers; pale pink, pale blue, peach. Peeking out from beneath an underskirt is the corner of a red felt covered jewellery box.

The fabric is worn at the corners and around the clasp. I ease my fingernail under the half moon of gold and it tears at my skin a little, but I ignore it and push the lid open. In front of me is a silver St Christopher on a thick chain and a solitaire diamond ring. But my attention is caught by the envelope stuffed into the lid. It is addressed to Owen in a bold, confident hand.

The seal is intact and this presents me with a conundrum. I am still staring at it when I hear a car pull up outside so I ram both box and letter back into the drawer and fly downstairs to reunite myself with the wine glass I left on the hallstand. I just make it.

Adam fills the hallway. “Alice!” he cries, “This is a nice surprise.”

“And even better there's a bottle of wine in the kitchen.”

He puts his head on one side. “Are we celebrating?”

Owen's voice comes from somewhere behind him. “No – we're explaining.”

I pour us each a glass of wine and we settle around the kitchen table. Adam looks expectantly at Owen but he lowers his eyes and shakes his head.

“Let Alice start,” he tells him. “I'll join in when…well, when I can.”

“OK, Adam, let's cut to the chase. You can stop worrying that Owen's losing his marbles because that's not what's happening. Remember back in the summer, when Owen disappeared, Richard and I told you that we'd seen what we thought was the ghost of a young man? Well Owen hasn't been talking to himself – he's been talking to his mother.”

“Owen's mother or the ghost's?”

“The ghost's. I know it sounds pretty incredible...”

Owen cuts across me. “It doesn't just sound incredible, it is. Ads, I'm still having major problems getting my head around this so you'll have to bear with me, but I'm just clinging to the fact that as Alice has seen what I've seen it means it is, well, in some way, real.

“For months I've had this…this presence…in my head. A woman from the early eighteenth century who wanted her grandson to be given a proper Christian burial. She was a healer too, Adam. She first came when Gran was very ill and she told me the right things to do to ease her passing. Things I wouldn't have known; combinations of herbs which must have been lost through the years. But they worked.

“I've been thinking about it today – I didn't question what was happening then because I was so desperate and I suppose afterwards I blocked the whole thing out.” He lowers his eyes again. “You know, Adam, more than anyone, that I haven't coped.”

Adam pulls his chair closer to Owen and puts his arm around his shoulder. “I know. I thought it was all catching up with you; back in the summer and again now. Add the stress of the café, the healing and everything...”

“And me.” I can hardly speak. “And the stress of an on-off relationship with me.”

Adam looks up from comforting Owen. “No, that hasn't helped either but it isn't entirely your fault.”

“It's not Alice's fault at all.” Owen leaps to my defence. “I've been impossible to love, and yet she's still loved me. I've done everything wrong and yet time and again she's been there for me. It's a miracle, really. I think without her I probably would be going under right now.”

“You're still pretty close to the edge. You need time to get your head together then confront what's happened to you, not pretend it hasn't like you usually do.”

Owen pulls away from him. “What do you mean, confront?”

“That drug counselling you made me go to all those years back – they made you look at the reasons you wanted to take stuff. For me it was an escape from things that hurt. You escape by ignoring them, Owen, but now they've caught up with you and you have to deal with them.”

Owen runs his hand over the top of his head. “Ads, I'm too tired for this right now.” His eyes are sunk right back into their sockets and there are deep bruises beneath them.

“OK,” I say, “then let's go to bed.”

He begins to put on his coat but I shake my head. “No, we'll stay here tonight.”

“We can't! We...”

“It's alright Owen – I know about your bedroom. I've seen it.”

He sinks back onto the kitchen chair, one arm still in his anorak. “You two...” he almost whispers it. “You two – you've got me all ways up.”