No one spoke for a moment. Just as Will was about to make a comment, he looked back and saw his wife standing behind them. She looked gaunt, deathly pale.
She was staring past them into the shelter.
Slowly, as if in a trance, she moved forward between them. Then Will saw what she was looking at.
On the roughly constructed duckboard floor lay a toy, a handmade rag doll with scrappy woollen hair and an embroidered face. It was filthy.
With something like reverence, Kate picked it up, tried to smooth its tattered and dirt-stained smock and, holding it like a baby, turned and walked away.
The workmen looked at each other uncomfortably. Unable to offer an explanation for his wife’s odd behaviour, Will turned and ran after her.
She had gone to her studio, of course, and he dared not follow her in.
He stood on the landing, unsure of what to do. No sound came from behind the door, but he knew she was in there. He called her name, softly at first, then a little louder, but she did not reply.
He wanted to beat on the door, kick it in if necessary. Drag her out and scream at her to pull herself together. But he stood where he was, mute and powerless to act.
After a while, he returned to the garden with a can of lager for each of the men. He had nothing to say about Kate’s behaviour, but he didn’t want the village hearing that the woman at Holland House was crazy, so he mumbled something about her being very overtired after completing a gruelling assignment, and working so many late nights had stressed her out a bit. Then he attempted to turn their attention back to their rather strange find.
Neville said that the air-raid shelter was set low in the ground with an awful lot of soil heaped on top of it. They could still continue with their original design, or they could pull the whole thing out and get rid of it. What did he think?
To Will, there was no question. Get rid of it. It was a sad reminder of a horrible and frightening time. For a moment, he heard the drone of the enemy bombers and saw the flashes as the baskets of incendiaries fell. He heard screaming.
He shook himself. This was not like him. Heavens, when he was born the war was just a memory. While realising that Kate was not going to be happy with a decision concerning her precious Holland House that she had not been privy to, he told the men to rip it out and get shot of it.
Neville glanced skywards and said it looked as if it would have to be a job for the following day. Great boiling black clouds had gathered, and before the men could collect up their tools and run for cover, a violent storm had descended upon them.
Will shouted that he would see them the following day, but his words were lost in the wind. By the time he reached the kitchen, his clothes were soaked, and water was streaming from him on to the tiled floor. He ran to their bedroom, stripped off his wet clothes and towelled himself down. Wearing a dry sweatshirt and joggers, he went back out on to the landing.
‘Kate. Darling, come out and talk to me. Please.’
The silence ate into him. He wanted to scream, to break something. But instead he slipped slowly down the wall until he was sitting outside her door. ‘Kate, I’m staying here until you come out. If it takes a week, fine, I’ll still be here.’
Some ten minutes later he heard footsteps moving towards the door. He listened to the bolt being drawn back. His wife came out. She stared down at him, frowning. ‘You look pretty silly sitting there, Will. Let’s go and have some tea, shall we?’
She began to walk away from him. ‘And there will be no talk of getting rid of the shelter. It stays. Understand? Now, tea or coffee?’
* * *
The shelter stayed.
Will looked down from the bedroom window, where he was busy fitting a sash cord. He couldn’t forget those glassy, unblinking eyes and the expression on his wife’s face when she had said, ‘Understand?’ He shuddered whenever it came back to him.
Now, the shelter was covered with fresh soil, which Kate had planted with a carpet of late summer flowers.
‘Just as it was. That’s how it should be.’ She had spent a morning clearing it out. She’d brushed dirt from the floor, rust from the metalwork, rubbed down the old woodwork and oiled the creaking hinges. She had refused his help on the grounds that if he were prepared to destroy it in the first place, he had no reason to assist her in its restoration.
He had been in touch with Matt and Liz during the days since the discovery of the shelter. He sensed that they knew something was terribly wrong, but he hadn’t had the heart to talk to them. On one occasion they had called in to tell him that he had been right about Gerald Grove, and Kate had made a brief appearance. They had barely been able to disguise their shock.
Yesterday he had gone to their new GP on the pretext of needing stronger painkillers. He had gone fully intending to ask the doctor for help with his troubled wife, but once he was seated in the slightly shabby surgery, he had found himself incapable of discussing her. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t betray her.
He tightened the sash cord and tested it.
They had come through it before and would do so again. Their love for each other would sustain them. He had recently discovered that the nicer he was to the house, the more he did, even the smallest of chores, the better Kate’s mood became. Thus, he continued to busy himself with useful jobs.
Two things did disturb him, however, and one of these was the doll.
A few evenings ago, Kate had been working in her room when she suddenly went off to the bathroom, leaving her door wide open. Will had taken the opportunity to snatch a glance inside, in the hopes of seeing something of her latest painting. All he had seen were covered benches and, to his surprise, sitting on the long window seat looking blindly out over Whisper Fen, the doll from the air-raid shelter. Not filthy as it had been, but freshly washed, its woollen braids carefully untangled and its smock neatly ironed. He had hurried into their bedroom, where he had sat on the bed feeling slightly queasy. She had even re-stitched the face. It was just a hasty glance but long enough to see it. His wife had cleverly embroidered it in such a way that instead of the usual blank face, it wore a very adult expression — the rather too full lips were now twisted into a sort of sneer. Surely, he reasoned, it had to be a trick of the light, but for a second, he had seen something distinctly corrupt about that face. And worse, it immediately brought Gerald Grove to mind.
Then there were Kate’s occasional excursions. She had made it abundantly clear that he was not welcome on these trips, which she said were either research for her paintings, or to look for items she needed for the restoration of the house.
She was out again now, but this time he was slightly less anxious. The following day was his birthday, and Kate was good at birthdays. She knew that he was a big kid where birthdays were concerned and without fail, she made his day one to remember. He recalled the time she had treated him to a trip in a hot-air balloon. It was unforgettable. Even if she was embroiled with Holland House, Kate would have thought of something special for him. She always did.
He gathered up his tools and went downstairs. Maybe this was a good time to ring Matt and ask if they could meet up. His anxiety was becoming too much to bear. But maybe he should just take a look at her latest paintings before ringing his friend, so he had something more concrete to tell him.
Slowly, he mounted the stairs and stood in front of the studio door. Kate’s studio had been a medium-sized bedroom that she had chosen for its unusual window and the uninterrupted view over the marsh.