The Devil's Feather Read online

  She smiled rather grudgingly in return. “My number’s in the book under J. Derbyshire, Barton Farm. I suppose you want help with the extension cables for the landline?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be here at eight-thirty.”

  THIS WAS THE PATTERN of the days that followed. Jess would make a reluctant offer of help, come the next morning to fulfil it, say very little before going away again, then return in the evening to point out something else she could do for me. On a few occasions I said I could manage myself, but she didn’t take the hint. Peter described me as her new pet-not a bad description, because she regularly brought me food from the farm-but her constant intrusions and bossy attitude began to annoy me.

  It’s not as if I got to know her well. We had none of the conversations that two women in their thirties would normally have. She used silence as a weapon-either because she had total insight into the reaction it inspired, or none at all. It allowed her to dictate every social gathering-and by that I mean her and me, as I never saw her in a larger group except on the rare occasions when Peter dropped in-because the choice was to join in her silences or trot out a vacuous monologue. Neither of which made for a comfortable atmosphere.

  It was difficult to decide how conscious this behaviour was. Sometimes I thought she was highly manipulative; other times I saw her as a victim, isolated and alienated by circumstance. Peter, who knew her as well as anyone, compared her to a feral cat-selfsufficient and unpredictable, with sharp claws. It was a fanciful analogy, but fairly accurate, since the goal of Winterbourne Barton appeared to be to “tame” her. Nonconformists may be the bread-and-butter of the media, and loved by the chattering classes, but they’re singled out for criticism in small communities.

  Over time I heard Jess described as everything from an “animal rights activist” to a “predatory lesbian”-even “having an extra chromosome” because of her flat features and wide-spaced eyes. The Down syndrome charge was clearly nonsense, but I was less sure about the animal rights and lesbian tags. She was at her most animated when I asked her about the birds and wildlife in the valley, always able to identify animals from my descriptions and occasionally waxing lyrical on their habitats and behaviour. I also wondered if her twice-daily visits were a form of courtship. To avoid wasting her time, I made it abundantly clear that I was heterosexual, but she was as indifferent to that as she was to hints about leaving me alone.

  After a couple of weeks, I was close to locking the doors, hiding the Mini in the garage and pretending to be out. I’d learnt by this time that I’d been singled out for special favours, since she never visited anyone else, not even Peter, and I began to wonder if Lily had found her as oppressive as I did. One or two people suggested that Jess’s attachment was to Barton House, but I couldn’t see it myself. I thought Peter’s suggestion that she saw me as a wounded bird was a more likely explanation. In her strangely detached way, she appeared to be monitoring me for signs of renewed anxiety.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t show any. Not at the beginning, at least. For some reason, I slept better alone in that echoing old house than I had in my parents’ flat. I shouldn’t have done. I should have jumped at every shadow. At night the wisteria tapped on the window-panes and the moon silhouetted finger-like tendrils against the curtains. Downstairs, the numerous French windows invited anyone to break in while I slept.

  My way of dealing with that threat was to leave the internal doors open and keep a powerful torch beside my bed. The beauty of Barton House was that every bedroom had a dressing-room with its own door to the landing, which meant I had a second exit if a prowler came along the corridor. It also had two staircases, one at the front and one at the back leading down to the scullery. This gave me confidence that I could outwit any intruder. I sprayed Jess’s WD40 into every external lock on the ground floor, and embraced the doors and windows as escape routes rather than entry points.

  Nevertheless, it was Winterbourne Valley that was the real healer. The contrast between the noise and chaos of Baghdad and these peaceful fields of ripening corn and yellow rapeseed couldn’t have been greater. Passing cars were few and far between and people even scarcer. From the upstairs windows I could see all the way to the village in one direction and to the Ridgeway-a fold of land behind Dorset’s coastline-in the other. This gave me a sense of security for, even though the hedgerows and darkness would screen a trespasser, those same concealments would hide me.

  JESS WAS A DEDICATED CONSERVATIONIST. Apart from her hostility to social change, she farmed her land in much the same way as her ancestors had done by scrupulously rotating her crops, rationing pesticides, stocking rare breeds and protecting the wild species on her property by conserving their natural habitats. When I asked her once what her favourite novel was, she said it was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was a rare piece of irony-she knew I’d identify her immediately with the difficult, unloved orphan of the story-but the landscape of the hidden wilderness was certainly one she liked to inhabit.

  By contrast, Madeleine liked her landscapes populated. She was at her best in company, where her easy charm and practised manner made her a popular guest. Peter described her as the typical product of an expensive girls’ boarding-school, well-spoken, well-mannered and not overburdened with brains.

  I thought her extraordinarily attractive the first time I met her. She had the sweet face and cut-glass English accent of the elegant British movie stars of the forties and fifties, like Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver or Virginia McKenna in Carve Her Name with Pride. It was the second Sunday of my tenancy. Peter had asked me along to meet some of my new neighbours over drinks in his garden. It was very casual, about twenty people, and Madeleine arrived late. I believe she came uninvited, as Peter hadn’t mentioned her beforehand.

  Despite the photograph on the landing at Barton House, I had no idea who she was until we were introduced. Indeed, I’m sure I assumed she was Peter’s girlfriend, because she tucked her hand through his elbow as soon as she arrived and allowed him to lead her about the garden. His guests were genuinely pleased to see her. There was a lot of hugging and kissing, and cries of “How are you?” and I was slightly taken aback to discover this was Lily’s daughter.

  “Your landlady,” Peter said with a wink. “If you have any complaints, now’s the time to make them.”

  I’d been doing rather well up until then-with only the odd flicker of anxiety when I heard a male voice behind me-but I felt a definite lurch of the heart as I shook Madeleine’s hand. If Jess was to be believed, she was a callous bitch who had driven her mother into penury and then neglected her. My personal view was that Jess’s unaccountable hatred clouded her thinking, but the doubt was there, and Madeleine read it in my face.

  Her immediate response was contrition. “Oh dear! Is the house awful? Aren’t you happy?”

  What could I do, other than reassure her? “No,” I protested. “It’s beautiful…just what I wanted.”

  There was nothing artificial about the smile that lit her face. She removed her hand from Peter’s elbow and tucked it into mine. “It is beautiful, isn’t it? I adored growing up there. Peter tells me you’re writing a book. What’s it about? Is it a novel?”

  “No,” I said cautiously. “It’s non-fiction…a book on psychology…not very exciting, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is. My mother would have been so interested. She loved reading.”

  I opened my mouth to dampen her enthusiasm but she was already talking about something else. I don’t remember what it was now, a reference to Daphne du Maurier, I expect-“an old friend of Mummy’s”-whom she trotted out to new acquaintances as a close family connection. This seemed a little unlikely to me, as there was a considerable age difference between the novelist and Lily, and du Maurier had been dead for fifteen years, but Madeleine brushed such details aside. In the world she inhabited, meeting a person fleetingly at a party amounted to friendship.

  She dropped names for effect in th
e same way that her mother was said to have done. I began to understand this when I commented on the paintings at Barton House and learnt that Nathaniel Harrison was her husband. It made sense of Jess’s remark that Madeleine had acquired the collection by sleeping with the man who owned them-even if “married to the artist” would have been more illuminating-but it led to a definite withdrawal on Madeleine’s part.

  She spoke of Nathaniel as if he were up with greats, and to cement the impression she quoted David Hockney, suggesting he was a close acquaintance and a great admirer of her husband’s work. To listen to her, Hockney was a regular visitor to Nathaniel’s studio and always singing his praises to critics and dealers. I was genuinely interested, not just in how they knew Hockney, but in why he would champion an artist whose style and approach to painting were so different from his own.

  “I didn’t realize he spent so much time in England,” I said. “I thought he was permanently based in America now.”

  Madeleine smiled. “He comes when he can.”

  “So how did you meet him?”

  “The painting world’s a small one,” she said rather coolly, looking for someone else to speak to. “Nathaniel’s invited to all the openings.”

  I should have left it there. Instead I asked her which other contemporary artists she and her husband knew. Lucian Freud? Damien Hirst? Tracey Emin? And where did her husband fit into the Brit art scene? Had Saatchi bought any of his work? She continued to smile but it fell far short of her eyes, and I knew I’d overstepped some invisible line in etiquette. I was supposed to revere the absent Nathaniel, not demonstrate knowledge of other artists or question Nathaniel’s close friendship with them.

  It was all very childish, and I was amused at how she avoided me until Peter brought us together again. “Did Marianne tell you Jess Derbyshire’s been helping her settle in?” he asked, steering her towards me with a hand in the small of her back. “Jess has built a hoist so that Marianne can access the Internet via her mobile.”

  I watched Madeleine’s expression close at the mention of Jess. “It’s fairly ramshackle,” I said. “We’ve discovered a signal near the ceiling in the back bedroom that allows me to operate my laptop underneath it. But it’s not ideal, and I wondered if you’d have any objections to my installing broadband. It’s available through the Barton Regis exchange and it would make life a lot easier. I’ve asked the agent and he says he can’t see a problem as long as I pay for it. I’ll happily leave the ADSL modem behind when I go.”

  Peter placed a teasing hand on my shoulder. “It’s no good talking gobbledy-gook to Madeleine. She still uses a quill and parchment. It’s a little box,” he explained to her, “that separates voices from online connection…means you can use the phone at the same time as the computer. If Marianne’s prepared to pay for it then my advice is to give her the go-ahead immediately.” He laughed. “It’ll make that old ruin of yours more attractive to the next tenant, and it won’t cost you a thing.”

  Madeleine’s smile would have frozen the balls off a brass monkey, but it wasn’t directed at Peter. It was directed at me. I had a strong sense that it was his hand on my shoulder that offended her, and not what he said.

  I WAS SURPRISED, therefore, when she came to Barton House, full of smiles, the next morning. “I realized last night that I never gave you an answer to the broadband question,” she said gaily, as I opened the front door. “Goodness! Is the key working properly now? Mummy only ever used the bolts because the lock was so stiff.” She walked past me into the hall. “I paid a man to grease it but he didn’t think it would last.”

  I shut the door behind her. “Jess lent me some WD-40. I give it a spray every day which seems to be doing the trick.” I gestured towards the sitting-room. “Would you like to go in here? Perhaps you’d rather be in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t mind,” she said, looking around to see if I’d made any changes. I saw her eyes flicker towards the piece of wallpaper that had peeled away from its Blu-Tack and was now, courtesy of Jess, firmly reattached with paste. “Mummy was always very pukka about entertaining guests in the drawing-room. She thought it was non-U to expect her friends to put up with dirty crockery and vegetable peelings. Did you manage to light the Aga all right?”

  “Jess did.”

  Madeleine’s mouth thinned immediately. “I expect she made a song and dance of it.”

  “No.” I opened the door to the sitting-room. “Shall we go in here?”

  Despite its size and sunny aspect, the room was too dreary to qualify as a drawing-room, and I hadn’t been into it since my first day. Jess had told me it used to be full of antiques until Madeleine replaced them with junk from a second-hand furniture shop.

  The carpet, a threadbare plush pile in muted pink, showed multiple evidence of dog accidents from when Lily had mastiffs of her own. According to Jess, she’d never exercised them enough, and had covered the marks with Persian rugs. Now packed away in storage, they were probably going mouldy, if the musty smell of damp in the room was any indication of their state when they were removed. The walls were worse. They hadn’t been decorated in years and the plaster was flaking above the skirting boards and beneath the coving round the ceiling. Irregular patches showed where Lily’s paintings had been.

  In an effort to distract the eye, Madeleine had hung two of her husband’s originals and three Jack Vettriano prints on the inside walls-The Singing Butler, Billy Boys and Dance Me to the End of Love-but all you could see of the prints was the sunlight reflecting on their glass. I couldn’t understand why she’d put them there as Vettriano’s film-noir style sat very uncomfortably with Nathaniel’s fantasy pictures of rooted and foliage-laden buildings, and I assumed she’d bought them cheap as a job lot. It wasn’t a subject I had any intention of discussing with her, however, as our tastes were clearly different.

  “What do you think of Vettriano’s work?” she asked, lowering herself to the vinyl sofa and spreading her skirt. “He’s very popular. Jack Nicholson owns three of his originals.”

  “I prefer Hockney and Freud.”

  “Oh, well, of course. Doesn’t everyone?”

  I produced my friendliest smile. “Can I make you a coffee?”

  “I couldn’t. I’ve just had one with Peter. He has an espresso machine. Have you tried it yet?”

  I shook my head as I took the chair beside her. “Yesterday’s the first time I’ve been to his house. He wanted to introduce me to some of the neighbours.”

  She leaned forward. “What did you think of them?”

  “Very nice,” I answered. It happened to be a true reflection of my views but Madeleine wasn’t to know that. In the circumstances, I could hardly say anything else without appearing rude.

  She looked pleased. “That’s a relief. I’d hate to think Jess had turned you against them.” She paused before going on in a rush. “Look, I hope you won’t take this wrongly-I know it’s none of my business-but you’ll have a happier time here if you look to the village for friends. Jess can be very peculiar if she takes a liking to someone. It’s not her fault…I’m sure it’s the result of losing her family…but she latches on to people and can’t seem to see how irritating it is.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say it had already happened but it would have felt like a betrayal. I needed to resolve my issues with Jess face to face, not add to the gossip about her by fuelling Madeleine’s curiosity. “She helped me with a few things when I first arrived,” I said. “I was grateful. I hadn’t realized there was only one phone socket here, or that the mobile signal was so bad. That’s why I need broadband.”

  But she was only interested in Jess. “Peter should have told you,” she said earnestly. “The trouble is he’s paranoid about breaking patient confidences. It’s not just the latching-on that’s a problem…it’s what she does when she thinks she’s being rejected. It’s obviously a legacy from the car accident-a need to be loved, I suppose-but it can be quite frightening if you’re not ready for it.”
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  I found myself staring at her in the same detached way that Jess stared at me. For no better reason than that I didn’t know how to respond.

  “I expect you think I’m awful,” Madeleine went on apologetically, “but I’d hate you to find out two months down the line that I’m right. Ask anyone.”

  I shifted my attention to my hands. “What am I supposed to ask them?”

  “Oh dear! I’m not doing this very well. Perhaps I should have said listen. Listen to what they say.”

  “About what?”

  “The stalking. It starts with her turning up on the doorstep when you first arrive, then she’s in and out all the time. She usually comes with presents or offers of help, but it’s difficult to get rid of her afterwards. She plagued my poor mother for years. In the end, the only way Mummy could avoid her was by hiding upstairs every time she heard the Land Rover on the drive.”

  “Peter doesn’t seem to have any problems with her.”

  “Only because she doesn’t like him. She’s convinced he tried to turn her into a Valium addict after her parents died. It’s when she fixates on someone that the problems start…and that’s usually a woman.” She examined my face. “I’m not being unkind, Marianne. I’m just trying to warn you.”

  “About what? That Jess is inept at making friendships…or that she’s a lesbian?”

  Madeleine shrugged. “I don’t know, but she’s never shown any interest in men. Mummy said she was close to her father, which may have something to do with it. Most people take her for a teenage boy the first time they see her…she certainly sounds like one. Mummy said her hormones went awry when she took on the mantle of farmer.”

  Her use of “Mummy” was getting on my nerves. I’ve never really trusted middle-aged women who choose that diminutive. It suggests their relationship with their mother has never developed beyond dependence, or they’re pretending a closer and sweeter affection than actually exists. “The only reason she showed up on my doorstep was because her dogs saw my car in the drive. She called them off when they surrounded me, otherwise we’d never have met.”