House in the Hills Read online

  Taking advantage of the turn of conversation, Conceptua laughed nervously. ‘Tell me how big they are. Think of the biggest thing in the house that you think resembles the casks, and tell me.’

  Catherine was in no mood for platitudes. ‘As big as your backside!’

  Conceptua’s jaw dropped.

  Catherine tensed. At first, it seemed a rebuke was forthcoming, a swift slap for being cheeky.

  Instead, she laughed, loudly and forcibly, as though she had to gather together all her laughter in one heap to be able to laugh at all. ‘You are right. My backside is as big as a wine cask.’

  Catherine eyed her sidelong. She had meant to be rude and still expected admonishment. None came and her feeling of impending disaster deepened.

  Conceptua cleared her throat and looked thoughtful, her tiny mouth pursed, her black eyes flitting around as though searching for something.

  ‘We could count the bottles. We could guess how many would fit in one of the casks.’

  The task was mundane. Catherine was not easily fooled and normally would have said so. But today was different. The feeling of unease would not go away. With an air of resignation more suited to an adult than a twelve-year-old, she sighed heavily and gave in. ‘Then show me the wine cellar.’

  A draught of cold air smelling of stone dust and old oak belched out to meet them as the door was pulled open.

  ‘It is very cool,’ said Conceptua who for her part was glad of the coolness on her plump cheeks, and equally glad to be away from everything happening in the house. Today was a bad day. The worst day in all her service to this household.

  ‘We sit,’ she said, patting the space beside her.

  Surrounded by the best of bottled vintages, Catherine joined her, sitting on a stone step, her hands clasped around her knees and Sophie dangling from her hands.

  Conceptua prattled on about her own family and how things had been when she was a girl. Catherine wasn’t really listening. Her thoughts were with her mother. She had a strange feeling about today, guilty at going off to watch the port wine boats. She hoped her mother was managing without her. She was such a fragile, beautiful creature, her skin as creamily smooth as a porcelain doll. Although Catherine didn’t doubt that her mother loved her, she knew that Walter Shellard was the most important thing in her mother’s life. Her world revolved around him. She’d dressed for him, kept house for him, waiting patiently until such time as he came to Portugal, sometimes only for days, sometimes for precious weeks.

  Conceptua sat droning on about the wine in the bottles around them. Carried away with memories of the taste of ruby, tawny, white port, and the Amontillado specially transported from vineyards near Jerez in Spain, her face brightened as she went on to tell Catherine of the times she’d sipped the dregs left after dinner. ‘But don’t tell your mother that,’ she said, then halted, her face reddening. ‘Oh!’ she said, her fleshy cheeks and chin creasing like squashed dough and her voice breaking with emotion. ‘Oh!’

  Suddenly she looked terrified – as though, like a wild rabbit, she’d strayed into a place very dangerous for her kind.

  Catherine felt the hairs rise on her arm. Her blood turned cold. She sat very still, very silent, her round eyes studying Conceptua’s plump face and knowing without any words being said that the badness she’d sensed was indeed to do with her mother. She could see the truth in Conceptua’s eyes.

  Catherine thought of the night before, her mother’s tears, previous quarrels, her father’s fleeting appearances, his trips to England and then, she thought of the loud gunshot before the one that had started the race this morning.

  Cuddling the doll tight against her chest, she spoke the cruel thought that had lurked at the back of her mind. ‘My mother’s dead, isn’t she?’

  She heard Conceptua’s sharp intake of breath. She’d often seen her nurse looking flustered, but never had she known her to look so shocked. Round-eyed and round-mouthed, her face was as stiff as a gargoyle.

  Catherine looked down at the cold stone floor. Her beautiful mother, with her long black hair and her slinky dresses, had left drifts of perfume wherever she happened to be. When Catherine had wanted to find her in this house of many rooms, she had followed her nose, sniffing for the familiar flowery scent.

  Conceptua began to cry. ‘My poor Catherine, my poor child!’

  Catherine held back her tears and stayed dry-eyed. Her pain turned inwards. It was sharp, like a shard of ice piercing her heart and creeping through her body.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she asked in a small voice.

  Conceptua shook her head and continued to cry, though managed to throw in a few words between sobs and wails. ‘No, you must not ask. I am not supposed to tell you.’ Louder now, her voice turning shrill. ‘Do not ask me.’

  ‘Did she quarrel with my father?’ The question was not out of place. She’d heard them quarrelling before, usually about marriage.

  ‘Why don’t you marry me and legitimize your child?’

  Legitimize was a long word and had something to do with marriage, of that Catherine was sure. And she was the child.

  ‘Your father is in England.’ She paused and swiped at her nose before the tears resumed. ‘He sent a telegram telling her…’ The plump nurse dabbed at her eyes, her nose and her mouth. She was drowning in tears. ‘Poor lady,’ she kept saying over and over again. ‘Poor lady.’

  Catherine felt cold inside. Right behind it came a feeling of great courage. She did not ever want to snivel like Conceptua snivelled. Things happen and have to be dealt with. ‘Conceptua, please stop crying. Whatever’s happened has happened and can’t be changed.’

  Conceptua stopped for a brief moment, red-rimmed eyes wide with amazement. Words failed her. Perhaps in an effort to escape the fact that her charge was more grown-up than she was, Conceptua got up from her seat. The barrel rocked on its base as her big backside left it behind. The cellar door squealed on iron hinges as she opened it, looking out this way and that, asking a question of any servant who passed by.

  Catherine stayed put. There was no comfort in cuddling her doll, no matter how close she held it. Her world and herself were like ice.

  And it’s your fault.

  The fault lay with her father. That’s why her mother was dead.

  She rested her chin on Sophie’s head, thought about the doll, then looked into its round, china face. Suddenly Sophie was the sole representation in this cellar of the man responsible for her mother’s unhappiness. And just as suddenly she decided she hated the doll she’d once loved avidly.

  With a strong backward flip of her hand, she threw the doll towards the wine racks. It disappeared among the dusty, dark bottles. She would never see that doll again. She was also sure she would not see her father – not for a very long time.

  For now it seemed like a bright light had been extinguished from her world. And she could not cry. For some reason, she could not cry.

  Three

  The funeral was quickly arranged and discreet, the thin cortège standing in a churchyard on the outskirts of the city in a crumbling suburb of silent alleys and dusty streets where no one knew her name.

  Leonora Rodriguez 1894-1924

  No dearly beloved wife, no sadly missed mother. Her epitaph was brief and nondescript, almost like her life. She was unmarried, therefore her role as a mother should not and could not exist.

  Only Catherine and a few servants attended the funeral. She looked around for her father. His daughter had still expected him to turn up, even if a bit later than everyone else. He was always absent, always late.

  ‘He is still in England,’ her nurse explained. ‘He will probably send another telegram,’ she hissed bitterly.

  Catherine sensed by the way Conceptua gritted her teeth that she’d like to say a lot more but something held her back.

  Catherine stared tearlessly as the earth rattled like hailstones, bouncing on the coffin lid and rolling along its sides. It was as though life had become unrea
l and she was watching herself standing there dressed in black, just the child of a woman who had loved and lost, had been used until her father had tired of her dark looks and absurd loyalty.

  The childish exterior hid a festering anger but also a fear. Her bags were already packed. She was being sent away at a time when she badly wanted to throw her arms around someone who felt the loss as greatly as she did. Her father had not put in an appearance; neither had he sent for her.

  ‘Not even a note,’ she’d heard Conceptua whisper to Jocasta, the cook.

  The two women shook their heads and made disapproving sounds with thin, pursed lips. The whispers and the pitying looks of servants were too much to bear, more so when she was told that her name would revert to that of her mother. She would be known as Catherine Rodriguez; no longer Catherine Shellard.

  ‘Your mother was not married to your father,’ sneered one of the younger housemaids with undisguised glee. ‘She was a rich man’s plaything. You will probably end up the same.’

  Catherine slapped her face.

  Everyone now gave her scant regard. It was as though she no longer existed. Her mother had been everything to her, and if she was so like her, then so be it. She would be like her; exactly like her!

  Unbeknown to them all, she had heard the other whisper, the gossip that tingled like electricity throughout the household. She had crept back to her old room at the front of the house. Through the adjoining door, she’d peeped into her mother’s room. One of the servants was in there kneeling on the floor before a huge leather chest. Bright shiny padlocks hung from the thick leather straps binding it.

  ‘Look at madam’s clothes,’ she whispered to one of the housemaids. ‘She’s sent two chests of clothes ahead of her and one more coming with her on Tuesday.’

  The two women gasped as they brought out a peacock-blue dress, hanging it before their eyes so they could scrutinize it more easily.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Catherine was on the point of shouting that they leave her mother’s clothes alone, but held back. These clothes were neither the style nor the size her mother had worn. A different woman was taking her mother’s place.

  The servants continued to make the same admiring sounds before putting each item away into what had been her mother’s wardrobes.

  Suddenly, one of them asked, ‘Is she bringing her wedding dress?’

  The other housemaid shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t think so. They’re already married.’

  Maria made a disappointed moue with her thin pale lips. ‘I suppose so. Shame, though. I would have liked to see it. I love weddings.’

  That night Catherine cried. The fact was obvious. Her father didn’t want her any more, and worse than that, it was his fault that her mother was dead. His fault!

  * * *

  Two days after the funeral, she was told she was leaving Castile Villanova. Conceptua made ready to accompany her to the home of Lopa Rodriguez, her mother’s aunt. Catherine had never met the woman; neither had her mother ever mentioned her in much detail except to say that she lived in a quinta – a farmhouse high on the green slopes above the upper Douro.

  ‘You’ll love it there,’ said Conceptua, her voice shaky and not sounding entirely convinced. ‘You can pick almonds and lemons from the trees, run in the grass and paddle in the streams.’

  ‘Can I take my pony?’

  Conceptua’s expression was pained and she avoided eye contact. ‘No.’

  ‘Is the house like Castile Villanova? Does it have lots of servants?’

  Conceptua’s eyelids fluttered over a furtive look. Catherine was an astute child and knew her nurse was loath to answer.

  ‘It’s a quinta; a farmhouse and not as big as this place. I don’t know whether your aunt has servants.’

  Catherine studied Conceptua’s face as the nurse reached to fasten the brown velvet buttons of her coat and fixed her hat on her head just as she always had.

  Catherine pushed her hands away. ‘Then perhaps I should learn to look after myself.’

  She saw Conceptua’s discomfited expression, the way she only half turned her head so that Catherine couldn’t see her whole face. In the space of a few days her life had changed for ever and so had she. Just a sideways look, a whispered comment, and she knew that things would not be good for her. Everything was changing.

  Conceptua was bustling with a few small items left on the dressing table, sparkling glass bottles that her mother had given her. They’d once contained perfume. When her mother had used up the contents, she’d passed the bottles to her daughter. Catherine used to pretend to dab her ears with what was left of the scent, in effect the essence of her mother.

  ‘Are you not coming with me?’ she asked her nurse.

  It seemed inconceivable that she could live without Conceptua washing her face, choosing her clothes and dressing her.

  ‘Of course I am. We shall travel on the train together.’

  For a brief moment Catherine felt a great sense of relief that some semblance of her life would be travelling with her. There was hope, she thought, but on re-examination she realized that wasn’t exactly what Conceptua had said.

  Conceptua was wrapping the last of the perfume bottles in tissue paper before packing them in a small wooden box inlaid with patterns in ivory.

  There was a nervous shiftiness to Conceptua’s face. Catherine knew immediately that there was something not being said. ‘You’re only coming with me on the train? You’re not coming to live with me and my aunt?’

  Conceptua was purposely evasive, her eyes fixed on the perfume bottles, wrapping them in yet more tissue paper. ‘You’ll enjoy the train.’

  Catherine had never travelled on a train before and in normal circumstances, the prospect of a long journey away from familiar surroundings would have excited her. However, it seemed odd that they were not being taken all the way to her great-aunt’s distant quinta by car. Conceptua would only be able to carry a small amount of luggage. Judging by the tough, brown cases, it looked as though Catherine would have to carry some too. She’d never had to do it before. There had always been servants, but today they were keeping out of her way, and those she did see either looked at her with pity or disdain.

  A feeling of being discarded – like dead flowers or burned ashes – stayed with her. And it wasn’t just the servants. Conceptua led her along the corridor past the servants’ quarters towards the rear entrance, just as she had on the day of her mother’s death.

  Catherine, not a little frightened, managed to sound indignant. ‘Why aren’t we going out of the front door? My mother is dead and buried. What else are you trying to hide from me?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Conceptua, setting down the luggage as they reached the door leading into a courtyard where the cars and horses were kept.

  The chauffeur, a swarthy man named Antoine, loped over in something between a run and a leap, his eyes constantly looking around him.

  ‘Quickly,’ he said as he grabbed the luggage.

  ‘Why didn’t you come round to the front door?’ Catherine demanded, aching to understand why things had changed so much, frustrated and confused that no one answered her questions.

  Antoine and Conceptua exchanged swift glances.

  Out of necessity, Conceptua recovered quickly, pulling open the car door before even Antoine had chance to do it for them. ‘Get into the car, Catherine. We have a train to catch.’

  Sighing and feeling sorry for herself, Catherine clambered into the back seat of the car.

  Antoine started the engine. Catherine’s eyes watched his hand move on to the shiny handle of the gearstick, squeezing it before easing it forward. Always after, she would remember that moment, the squeezing and the pushing forward; it marked the moment of her severance from everything she’d held dear.

  Her attention went from there to the walls of the house itself. Mean windows with wooden shutters looked out on to the rear courtyard. Forward of this were grander rooms and the inner courtya
rd where fountains played and an arched colonnade offered shade even at midday.

  The smells of ripe fruits and trees heavy with leaves followed them all the way down the drive. Eventually those same trees framed the imposing frontage, the shadows they threw bluish black against the honeyed walls, the colourful tiles surrounding arched windows dating from Moorish times.

  Not far from the main gate, she strained her neck to glimpse the last of the only home she’d ever known. The main body of the house was now hidden by foliage. All that remained on view were the clay roof tiles of the central pergola, gleaming like embers in the glare of the morning sun.

  The day was warm and her coat too thick. Catherine dozed.

  Thinking she was sound asleep, Conceptua, who had opted to sit in the front seat next to Antoine, sighed and slid her feet out of her stout lace-up shoes. She much preferred her old sloppy ones, but had considered them unsuitable for travelling. She was uncomfortable enough at the prospect of this journey without her feet being uncomfortable too.

  Sighing deeply, she shook her head and rubbed at her red-rimmed eyes with finger and thumb. She hadn’t had much sleep of late, and wouldn’t until this was all over. Once it was she was off to look after her sick sister. She would not stay in service to the Shellards.

  She sighed again.

  Antoine glanced at her, his nose twitching with curiosity over a thick brush of grey moustache. ‘Stop sighing. It’s none of your business, woman.’

  Almost as though in defiance, Conceptua sighed again. ‘I can’t help it, Antoine. I can’t serve someone for all these years and then not be affected by the way they’re treated. I wish we could have left by the front door. First she is a beloved daughter, next she is a bastard.’

  ‘Who are we to criticize?’ said Antoine with an indolent shrug. ‘It was the master’s wish that she leave as quietly as possible and without fuss. There’s no room for a bastard child at the Castile Villanova now, not with the new wife moving in. He had no wish to have her coming out of the front door when his new bride was about to cross the threshold. Stands to reason the new wife knows nothing about the child or her mother.’