The House with Nine Locks, page 5
She decided she was hungry. She took the stew out of the oven and put it on the table. The potatoes were overcooked and powdery, but improved by some butter, which Adelais spread over them with a knife. It was raining outside. Water trickled in the drainpipes and gurgled in the drains. The muted call of a mechanical cuckoo reached her from her father’s workshop. Then everything in the house was still.
Adelais wondered why her mother hadn’t said anything that morning about going to Brussels. Was there an emergency? What if she wasn’t back by morning? Should she go off to school, or wait? What if her mother didn’t come back at all? Who should she tell, Mrs Wouters or the police? Adelais got out her geometry homework and tried to focus on calculating angles, but it didn’t make her feel any easier. The house was too empty, and if she stopped what she was doing and listened, she fancied she could hear someone creeping down the stairs. In the end she decided to follow her mother’s instructions and go to bed. Once in her pyjamas, she pulled the blankets up over her nose and listened to the rain as it slowly died away. On an impulse, she grabbed an old rag doll she’d had since she was three, and dragged it under the covers with her.
She was woken by the growl of an engine and headlights in the street. She scrambled to the window in time to see the back of a car as it turned into the alley. She grabbed her stick. It was still dark, and without the brace she was forced to go slowly down the stairs. Voices in the kitchen rose up to meet her. A woman was shouting, sobbing – it couldn’t be her mother. Her mother had never sounded like that. Another voice, a man’s, broke in. He was trying to calm her down. That voice she knew: it was Uncle Cornelis’s. For a moment, Adelais wondered if she was dreaming. It was the kind of situation that had often cropped up in her dreams. In her dreams she was always watching and listening from outside a room, although since the rescue at the Sint-Joris Bridge, those dreams came less often.
She opened the kitchen door. Her father was slumped behind the table. Adelais hardly recognised him: his hair was matted, he had grown a shaggy beard and his eyes were bloodshot. He was supposed to have been working for a rich collector of clocks, but he looked like he had been imprisoned in a dungeon.
Adelais’s mother stood opposite, her face in her hands. Uncle Cornelis placed a hand on her shoulder, but she knocked it away. ‘Get away from me!’
There was venom in her voice and in her eyes. She raised a hand. She was going to hit him. She was going to strike Uncle Cornelis across the face.
‘Mama?’
They saw her. Her mother’s arm dropped to her side. She turned away. Her father looked sheepish, spent. Only Uncle Cornelis was unchanged. He cleared his throat and smiled. ‘Hello, little one. We didn’t mean to wake you, we’re sorry. Be a good girl now, and go back to bed. Let the grown-ups argue.’
Adelais didn’t move. She wanted to know what was wrong with her mother and father. She wanted to know that everything was all right.
Slowly her father got to his feet. Without saying a word, he went over to Adelais and put his arms around her. His face was rough and he smelled of rancid bacon. Adelais began to make sense of it: the collector of clocks had tricked him, and made him a prisoner – like Robert Donat in The Count of Monte Cristo – and somehow it was all Uncle Cornelis’s fault.
‘Come on, now,’ her father said at last, and taking Adelais’s hand, he led her slowly back up the stairs.
‘Did he put you in a dungeon, Papa? Did he lock you up?’
‘Lock me up? Who?’
‘The collector. Did he trick you?’
‘I’m not sure—’
‘You’ll tell the police?’
Her father’s grip tightened on her hand. ‘No. No, we’re not telling the police, Ada. It was nothing like that. A mistake, that’s all. It was just a mistake.’
They were on the landing when Adelais heard her mother shouting at Uncle Cornelis again: ‘Get out! Just get out!’
The next morning Adelais got up quietly and made her own breakfast without waking her parents. When she returned from school everything was back to normal. Her father had shaved off his beard and was hard at work in his workshop. Her mother was in the kitchen, peeling vegetables. She had caught Adelais’s cold, and was sniffing, that was the only change.
Adelais wanted to know more about the collector, and what had happened in Brussels, but Mrs de Wolf was not in the mood to talk. Adelais sensed she was disappointed not to have the money from the clock collector, whoever he was. Adelais thought of saying she didn’t mind about the custom-made supports, that she was perfectly happy with the one she had. But then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to know about the company in North Holland, because her mother had kept the catalogue hidden.
The following Saturday Adelais took the tram to the Sint-Lucas Hospital. This time she arrived during visiting hours, but when she got to Sebastian’s ward, she found him gone.
The sister in charge was seeing to an old man in one of the other beds. ‘Ah, you,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’
‘Where’s Sebastian Pieters?’
‘Don’t worry, dear. He isn’t dead. We discharged him the day before yesterday.’ The sister led Adelais to a room full of cabinets and sinks. ‘He left this behind. Perhaps you could take it to him if you see him.’ She was holding Sebastian’s copy of The Yellow Dog. ‘You will be seeing him, won’t you?’
EIGHT
It rained for the rest of the week, not with the same conviction, but enough that Adelais did not feel like going out on the handcycle. She did not continue with her uncle’s challenge, even though the Devil’s House was nearer than the hospital. She went to school, sat through the lessons, came home again, and stayed in her room, or up in the attic. The Yellow Dog sat on her bedside table, but she did not read on. She didn’t care about Concarneau’s mysteries now that Sebastian was not there to share them. She knew she should take the book back to him, but Zuid was even further than the hospital. Someone would have to go with her, and Adelais did not want to ask. Her mother always seemed preoccupied or brisk, as if to ward off any questions about the night she returned from Brussels. Nothing had been said about it, and by the look of things, nothing was going to be. There was a silence in the house that was new.
On Saturday morning the clouds lifted, and a bright sun returned. Adelais was alone in the kitchen, colouring in a map of Africa, when she heard the ring of a bicycle bell coming from the street outside. She was not supposed to open the door to strangers while her parents were out. So when the ringing did not stop, she went to the front door and peered out through the letter box. The letter box was halfway up the door and all she could see at first was a pair of bicycle wheels doing a slow turn over the cobbles.
The bell rang again.
‘What do you want?’
There was a squeak of brakes. The wheels turned and came towards her. Adelais glimpsed turned-up trousers and the hem of a cable-knit sweater. Then she was looking at a familiar pair of chestnut-brown eyes.
‘Why don’t you have a telephone?’ Sebastian said.
Adelais blinked. ‘We’re getting one.’
‘Good. Because I hate writing letters. It’s a bore.’
‘I know.’
Sebastian nodded, as if satisfied to have got something off his chest. ‘Are you—’
‘Have you come for your book?’
‘My book?’
‘The Yellow Dog.’
Sebastian frowned. ‘I thought I left it at the hospital.’
‘You did.’
‘Well, no. I came to—’
‘You’ve got your bicycle back.’
Sebastian looked down. ‘No, I haven’t. This is an old one, my father’s.’
Adelais threw back the bolts and opened the door. Sebastian had been restored to normal. The cast had been removed from his leg, there was colour in his cheeks, and apart from the white scar on his forehead there was no way of telling he had been in a serious accident. ‘Are you finished with your crutches?’
‘I’ve still got them for emergencies.’
‘And they let you go cycling?’
‘I’m supposed to build up my strength, the doctors said so. I’m cycling to Laarne today. That’s eight kilometres.’
Adelais felt a faint stab of jealousy. She knew there was an old castle near Laarne. People said they used to burn witches there, but she had never been. No bus or tram would take her that far outside the city. ‘I’ll get your book,’ she said.
‘I was thinking you could come with me. There’s a place I’d like you to see. It’s a bit of a secret, as a matter of fact.’
‘Eight kilometres altogether, or eight kilometres there and back?’ Adelais said. ‘Because that would be sixteen kilometres.’
Sebastian wheeled the bicycle around so that she could see all of it. It was black and, unlike the Gitane, equipped with both a basket at the front, and a pannier at the back. There was food in the basket and the pannier had a folded blanket strapped across the top. ‘You can sit here.’
Adelais’s parents wouldn’t be back for hours.
‘It’s the castle, isn’t it? That’s what you want to show me.’
Sebastian shook his head and smiled.
The streets were narrow all the way to the Scheldt. After that, their route followed the river as it meandered towards the south, stark brick terraces and warehouses giving way to fields and farms, with alders and willows crowding the spaces in between. Most of the way, the river was hidden behind a swathe of long grass, but Adelais could feel its presence in the wide horizons and the cool, gusting breeze. She was holding on to the end of the walking stick, which she had hooked over the handlebars of the bicycle. Her left hand was on Sebastian’s shoulder.
The road became a track. Sebastian pedalled harder, swooping and veering between the puddles. Adelais let her head roll back, so that she could feel the sun on her face.
‘Where are we going?’
‘It’s a secret, I told you.’
Without warning, Sebastian steered the bicycle through a flooded pothole. Adelais shrieked, though the water had hardly touched her. It felt good to shriek and, apart from Sebastian, there was nobody around to hear her.
Near a village called Destelbergen they left the river and wound their way east, past coppery hedgerows and waterlogged meadows that steamed in the sun. Sebastian stopped to point out the grey turrets of Laarne Castle, but instead of heading towards them, he pedalled on until the hedgerows gave way to an old brick wall. The wall went on for a hundred metres and stopped at a pair of iron gates. Thick tendrils of ivy had wrapped themselves around the bars, so that it was hard to see beyond them. Adelais glimpsed a carpet of sodden leaves and a curving avenue of trees.
‘Is this the place? Who lives here?’
‘Let’s see.’
‘How do we get in?’
The gate had been secured with a padlock and chain. Sebastian pedalled on a few metres, to where a poplar had seeded itself into the bank. The wall behind it was bowed and misshapen. The upper rows of bricks had completely fallen away. On the other side of the road, horses were grazing.
Sebastian climbed to the top of the wall. ‘Come on.’
‘I can’t get up there.’
‘Give me your stick.’
‘It’s too high.’ Adelais could imagine what her mother would say, the horror and disbelief that she should even think of it.
‘Use that foothold, where the gap is.’
‘Then what? I could fall.’
‘You won’t fall. I’ll have your hand.’
Adelais considered the hand in question, and the boy attached to it. If she were halfway up the wall and lost her footing, she doubted he would have the strength to hang on to her. He would have to let go or be pulled down on top of her.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here.’
‘Put your left foot in that gap, where the brick’s fallen out. Lift yourself and grab my hand. We can haul you up the rest of the way together.’
Adelais shook her head. ‘I’m not strong enough.’
‘Yes, you are. I know you are.’
‘How?’
Sebastian reached down further. His hand was just above the top of her head. ‘If you’re strong enough to drag me out of a river, you’re strong enough for this. You’re the strongest girl I know, and the bravest.’
Adelais looked into his face. He was not smiling. He was waiting. He gave her a reassuring nod. She had been brave at least once, under the Sint-Joris Bridge, and nothing so very bad had happened. It was easier being brave when you had Fate on your side.
She handed Sebastian the stick, took a faltering step back and launched herself up the wall.
The house had once been white, but dirt and algae now discoloured the stucco, which had crumbled away in places to reveal the brickwork underneath. Most of the tall windows were boarded up. The rest were shuttered from the inside. For all that, it seemed to Adelais like a palace. Two sets of steps led up to a wide gravel terrace, bordered with a stone balustrade. There were plaster escutcheons over the windows and a balcony above the front door. The first floor was topped by a pediment, decorated with a coat of arms.
Sebastian led the way around the terrace which had been colonised by weeds and several oak saplings. ‘No one’s lived here for years. The Wehrmacht used it in the war.’
‘Who owns it?’
‘The Counts of Ribaucourt did originally. One of the countesses got fed up living in that gloomy old castle, and had this built instead. It’s supposed to be a hunting lodge, but I don’t think there was much hunting. Mostly parties.’
‘What about now?’
‘It belongs to the city council. But they’ve no use for it. Too far out for a school or a hospital.’
The house backed onto a wide lawn, flanked with trees. At the centre of an ornamental pond stood the statue of a huntress holding a broken bow. The water in the pool was black and smelled of ooze. Adelais tried to picture the place as it would have been in the countess’s day: light blazing from the windows, carriages in the driveway, gardens sculpted and flowering.
They had stopped at the side of the building. A small window was set low in the wall, shedding light into a basement. Sebastian pulled at the boarding. It came away in his hands. ‘You have to see inside.’
‘What if someone catches us?’
Sebastian got the window open with a practised nudge of his fist. ‘I told you: nobody comes here, except me.’
Inside the house it was cold and dark. The smell of damp was everywhere: in the bare, filthy kitchens, in the entrance hall, with its Greek columns and marble floor, on the grand staircase that was wide enough for three people, arm-in-arm. They went in silence, the crunch of grit beneath their feet.
At the top of the stairs, a huge stain discoloured the plaster. Adelais recognised the speckled pattern of mould.
‘There’s a hole in the roof,’ Sebastian said. He was whispering, even though they were alone. ‘I put some buckets underneath, but it’s not enough.’
Opposite the top of the stairs was a set of double doors, their brass handles shaped like a pair of swans. Sebastian threw them open. ‘The ballroom. You have to see it.’
He stepped back to let her pass. Sunshine was streaming in through tall French windows, softened by the dirt on the glass. The beams struck a huge chandelier, suspended above the middle of the floor, and were split into hundreds of rainbow-coloured threads. The room was bigger than Adelais had imagined. Plaster reliefs, white on pale blue, decorated the walls.
‘So they were here, the parties.’
‘The countess was famous for them.’
Adelais made her way to the windows. Even with the stagnant pond, the view across the grounds was stately. ‘It’s a shame. They shouldn’t let it all fall down.’
‘They will though, unless someone buys it.’
‘Someone rich.’
‘That’s right.’
Adelais turned. Sebastian wanted to tell her something, but wasn’t sure if he should. ‘What? Is someone going to buy it?’
Sebastian looked at the floor. ‘You’ll laugh.’
‘Only if you say something funny.’
‘I thought … I thought I’d buy it. When I’m older. When I’m an architect. It can’t cost all that much. Look at the state of it. And I’d get investors to back me.’
‘What are investors?’
‘They put money in at the start, and then take it out again later, only more.’
‘How’s there more?’ Adelais was fairly sure having parties and mending roofs meant spending money, not making it.
‘There’ll be more because it’ll be a hotel, a country-house hotel. There’ll be nothing else like it in all of East Flanders. I’m going to call it the Astrid, after the countess. That was her name: Astrid Christyn.’
‘What does your father think?’
Mr Pieters was a businessman. He had to know about these things.
‘I haven’t exactly told him.’ Sebastian set about closing the shutters. ‘I did ask him if the place would make a good hotel, in principle. He said no, it wouldn’t. A hotel has to be in the middle of a city or by the seaside. If it’s neither, nobody comes to stay.’
‘I’d come to stay,’ Adelais said.
‘Would you? I’d see you get the best room, with the best view.’
‘Can I have breakfast in bed?’
‘Of course, with champagne.’
‘And a boiled egg?’
‘Any kind of egg you like.’
‘Not too runny. I don’t like them runny.’
‘I’ll inform the chef.’
‘Good. That’s settled then.’
Sebastian rubbed a patch of dirt off the window with his fist. ‘We’ll make it happen one day, shall we? You and me?’
‘All right,’ Adelais said.
Sebastian looked at her and laughed, as if talk of a hotel had all been a joke.
