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Authors: Minette Walters
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here than you are to have me.”
Looking back, it’s odd that neither of us took these remarks personally. They were simple statements of fact: we preferred our own company. It hadn’t always been so for me but for Jess it was natural. “I get it from my father. He could go days sometimes without speaking a word. He used to say we were born into the wrong century. If we’d been around before the industrial revolution our skills would have counted for something and our reticence would have been taken for wisdom.”
Her mother had tried to teach her to be more forthcoming. “While she was alive, she could always get me to smile—my brother and sister, too—but I reverted to type after they died…or forgot how to do it. I don’t know which. It’s a learnt skill. The more you do it, the easier it comes.”
“I thought smiling was an automatic response.”
“It can’t be,” said Jess bluntly, “otherwise Madeleine wouldn’t be able to do it. Her smile’s about as genuine as a crocodile’s…and she shows more teeth.”
A LL THIS TOOK TIME to make sense. That day, I was just an explorer. I remember standing in front of a poster-size photograph on the wall at the end of the upstairs landing with “Madeleine” printed underneath it. The name registered because Jess had asked me if she and I were related, but still I didn’t know who she was. It was a black-and-white shot of a young woman leaning into the wind with a turbulent sea behind her, and, but for the name, I’d have assumed it was an Athena print. It was striking, both for the girl’s looks and the way the photograph was lit.
Madeleine was stunning. She was dressed in a long coat and trousers with a black cloche hat pulled over her head. Her face was turned towards the camera and the definition of every feature was extraordinary. Her perfect teeth showed in the sort of triangular smile that American pageant queens practise for hours, but to me it looked genuine, reaching to eyes that danced with mischief. I came to understand why Jess didn’t like her—there was no contest between Madeleine’s Venus and Jess’s Mars—but it was a mystery why Peter Coleman had turned her down.
I had no idea at that stage that Madeleine had been responsible for preparing Barton House for letting, but I do remember thinking that whoever owned the place had a very low opinion of tenants. It could have been so imposing—commanding ten times what I was paying—but instead it was hideously tacky. Every room showed evidence of cheaper, smaller furniture taking the place of something grander. Mean, narrow wardrobes had the imprint of a larger brother on the wall behind them, and indentations in the carpets showed where great beds and heavy dressing-tables had stood before their flimsier replacements had been imported.
To anyone with an ounce of creativity, the house screamed for a makeover. Given freedom, I’d have taken it back to its eighteenth-century origins, stripping the walls of their twentieth-century coverings and removing the fussy curtains to show, and use, the panelled shutters. Simplicity would have suited it, where frills, furbelows and vulgar furniture made it look like an ageing tart with thick make-up covering the blemishes. I discovered later that it was as it was because Madeleine refused to allow Lily’s solicitor to squander her inheritance on improvements, but it did set me wondering about the owner. It seemed so obvious to me that any money spent now would pay for itself again and again through higher rent.
I was most puzzled by the sketches and oil paintings that hung in every room. They were a mish-mash of styles—abstracts, life drawings, eccentric representations of buildings with roots anchoring them to the ground and foliage growing from their windows—but they were all signed by the same artist, Nathaniel Harrison. Some were originals and some—the sketches—were prints, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would collect
Looking back, it’s odd that neither of us took these remarks personally. They were simple statements of fact: we preferred our own company. It hadn’t always been so for me but for Jess it was natural. “I get it from my father. He could go days sometimes without speaking a word. He used to say we were born into the wrong century. If we’d been around before the industrial revolution our skills would have counted for something and our reticence would have been taken for wisdom.”
Her mother had tried to teach her to be more forthcoming. “While she was alive, she could always get me to smile—my brother and sister, too—but I reverted to type after they died…or forgot how to do it. I don’t know which. It’s a learnt skill. The more you do it, the easier it comes.”
“I thought smiling was an automatic response.”
“It can’t be,” said Jess bluntly, “otherwise Madeleine wouldn’t be able to do it. Her smile’s about as genuine as a crocodile’s…and she shows more teeth.”
A LL THIS TOOK TIME to make sense. That day, I was just an explorer. I remember standing in front of a poster-size photograph on the wall at the end of the upstairs landing with “Madeleine” printed underneath it. The name registered because Jess had asked me if she and I were related, but still I didn’t know who she was. It was a black-and-white shot of a young woman leaning into the wind with a turbulent sea behind her, and, but for the name, I’d have assumed it was an Athena print. It was striking, both for the girl’s looks and the way the photograph was lit.
Madeleine was stunning. She was dressed in a long coat and trousers with a black cloche hat pulled over her head. Her face was turned towards the camera and the definition of every feature was extraordinary. Her perfect teeth showed in the sort of triangular smile that American pageant queens practise for hours, but to me it looked genuine, reaching to eyes that danced with mischief. I came to understand why Jess didn’t like her—there was no contest between Madeleine’s Venus and Jess’s Mars—but it was a mystery why Peter Coleman had turned her down.
I had no idea at that stage that Madeleine had been responsible for preparing Barton House for letting, but I do remember thinking that whoever owned the place had a very low opinion of tenants. It could have been so imposing—commanding ten times what I was paying—but instead it was hideously tacky. Every room showed evidence of cheaper, smaller furniture taking the place of something grander. Mean, narrow wardrobes had the imprint of a larger brother on the wall behind them, and indentations in the carpets showed where great beds and heavy dressing-tables had stood before their flimsier replacements had been imported.
To anyone with an ounce of creativity, the house screamed for a makeover. Given freedom, I’d have taken it back to its eighteenth-century origins, stripping the walls of their twentieth-century coverings and removing the fussy curtains to show, and use, the panelled shutters. Simplicity would have suited it, where frills, furbelows and vulgar furniture made it look like an ageing tart with thick make-up covering the blemishes. I discovered later that it was as it was because Madeleine refused to allow Lily’s solicitor to squander her inheritance on improvements, but it did set me wondering about the owner. It seemed so obvious to me that any money spent now would pay for itself again and again through higher rent.
I was most puzzled by the sketches and oil paintings that hung in every room. They were a mish-mash of styles—abstracts, life drawings, eccentric representations of buildings with roots anchoring them to the ground and foliage growing from their windows—but they were all signed by the same artist, Nathaniel Harrison. Some were originals and some—the sketches—were prints, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would collect
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