The Empty House Read Online Free PDF Page A

pieces of furniture. She returned to the top of the stairs, and so up another pair of steps, to a closed door. She opened this, and after the gloom of the rest of the house, the blast of bright, northern light by which she was immediately assailed, was dazzling. Stunned by it, she stepped blindly into an astonishing room, small, completely square, windowed on three walls, it stood high above the sea like the bridge of a ship, with a view of the coastline that must have extended for fifteen miles.
    A window-seat with a faded cover ran along the north side of this room. There was a scrubbed table, and an old braided rug and in the centre of the floor, like a decorative wellhead, the wrought-iron banister of a spiral staircase which led directly down to the room beneath, the "Hall" of Mr. Williams's prospectus.
    Cautiously Virginia descended, to a room dominated by an enormous art nouveau fireplace. Off this was the bathroom; and then another door, and she was back where she'd started, in the dark and depressing sitting-room.
    It was an extraordinary, a terrible house. It sat around her, waiting for her to make some decision, contemptuous of her faintness of heart. To give herself time, she went back up to the tower room, sat on the window-seat and opened her bag to find a cigarette. Her last. She would have to buy some more. She lit it and looked at the bare scrubbed table, and the faded colours of the rug on the floor, and knew that this had been Aubrey Crane's study, the workroom where he had wrestled out the lusty love stories that Virginia had never been encouraged to read. She saw him, bearded and knickerbockered, his conventional appearance belying the passions of his rebellious heart. Perhaps in summertime, he would have flung widethese windows, to catch all the scents and sounds of the countryside, the roar of the sea, the whistle of the wind. But in winter it would be bitterly cold, and he would have to wrap himself in blankets, and write painfully with chilblained fingers mittened in knitted wool . . .
    Somewhere in the room a fly droned, blundering against the window-pane. Virginia leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the window and stared sightless at the view and started one of the interminable ding-dong arguments she had been having with herself for years.
    I can't come here.
    Why not?
    I hate it. It's spooky and frightening. It's got a horrible atmosphere.
    That's just your imagination.
    It's an impossible house. I could never bring the children here. They've never lived in such a place. Anyway, there's nowhere for them to play.
    There's the whole world for them to play in. The fields and the cliffs and the sea.
    But looking after them . . . the washing and the ironing, and the cooking. And there's no refrigerator, and how would I heat the water?
    I thought that all that mattered was getting the children to yourself away from London.
    They're better in London, with Nanny, than living in a house like this.
    That wasn't what you thought yesterday.
    I can't bring them here. I wouldn't know where to begin. Not on my own like that.
    Then what are you going to do?
    I don't know. Talk to Alice, perhaps I should have talked to her before now. She hasn't children of her own, but she'll understand. Maybe she'll know about some other little house. She'll understand. She'll help. She has to help.
    So much, said her own cool and scathing voice, for all those strong resolutions.
    Angrily, Virginia stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette, ground it under her heel and got up and went downstairs and took out the keys and locked the door behind her. She went back up the path to the gate, stepped through and shut it. The house watched her the small bedroom windows like derisive eyes. She tore herself from their gaze and got back into the safety of her car. It was a quarter past twelve. She needed cigarettes and she was not expected back at Wheal House for lunch, so, when she had turned the car, and was driving back up on to the