WALLED IN

“Look, Son, you gave it your best shot.” Ben placed the mobile on his workbench, speaker turned on, as he fiddled with an old two-stroke.

“Dad, this always happens. Why can’t I just get a break? You know, like most people do?”

Ben was very aware of his son’s frustration. “I’m sorry, I know it’s tough out there, but you can always come back here. The door’s never closed to you, and you know the work never finishes.”

“Yeah, I know that, it’s just… holy crap, it would be nice for something to go right for a change.” Tom hesitated before finishing; he didn’t want to sound desperate. He let out a long sigh. “So, I’ll see you next week?”

“Yes, Son. I’ll speak to old Caulfield and let him know. Come in Monday. And listen, Tom, don’t be too upset about it, I know it’s difficult, but it will work out. I’m sure of it.”

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll see you next week.” Tom hung up and pocketed his mobile. He felt the air rush out of him, the exhalation as heavy as his dark mood.

Five Mile Drive was just that, and for a great distance was bordered by a tall, drystone wall. The section visible along the road was only part of it. The estate it encompassed was vast, and at one corner the wall continued out of sight, perpendicular to the road. In time, the limestone would be bullied and broken by saplings and deer. Moss and ferns would take root in its crevices. Its very nature, its organic longevity would eventually be its literal downfall.

The Wyatts had been employed on the estate for generations. The current lord of the manor, Sir John Pettigrew Caulfield, had known three of those. Sir John was wealthy, but his was a shadow of his forbears’ wealth. The estate would be all but impossible to create now. The labour cost alone for stone masons the calibre of past craftsmen inconceivable. Only the vulgar bling of the oil-rich sheikhs and Russian oligarchs could come close. A barb that often rankled the jowls of the Earl. As he was ever fond of expressing.

Tom Wyatt waited outside his father’s cottage as usual. He’d settled easily back into the old routine. But Dad didn’t always come out with him these days. Grandad had taken a turn and was staying with him. Grandma had already passed and the big, gentle man he always knew as Gramps had diminished before his eyes, often admitting it was too sad to be in the place without the woman he had shared his life with. The lack of her haunted him. Haunted their shared space. He was ninety and had worked out on the walls until he was eighty. Hard, calloused hands like shovels manipulating the stone. Gramps had been physically immense. But it wasn’t all that he loved about him. He took on life’s challenges with a serenity Tom had never seen in anyone else. When he passed it would hit him hard. He didn’t want to think about it. Losing his grandmother had been bad enough.

His father came out and got in the battered Land Rover. He didn’t say anything, the look on his face was more than eloquent. They drove in silence to the east of the estate. The wall here was shorter than the one bordering the road. Sheep and deer harangued this stretch far more than any flora. Its situation exposed it to snow drifts and high winds in the winter.

“Are you going to be quiet all morning?” Tom said, as he switched the ignition off.

“I may be. I don’t think he’s got long left, Son.”

It wasn’t difficult to see the pain in his father’s face. “Are you sure you want to be out here today?”

“I don’t really want to be here, and I don’t want to be there. What am I supposed to do?”

“We work, Dad, like men do, and put those thoughts from our head. We deal with it when the time comes as best we can.”

Ben turned to his son, the thinnest smile on his face, “You know, you have a lot of your grandfather in you.” Then he glanced out the window. “Come on, this won’t mend itself,” and opened the door.

They worked there for two weeks, and Tom’s father was there physically most of the time. Mentally he was often elsewhere. The job could be tough and joyless. So much so that Tom had attempted to leave it more than once. But he came back, because whatever else he tried, never worked out.

It was after those two weeks that Tom got the call from his father. Ben said simply that the big man had gone. Even though he was expecting it, the call sideswiped him. The journey over to his parents’ cottage passed without him realising he’d driven there. His father was eerily calm, but Tom saw the colour had changed in his face. His mother hugged him without speaking. Words could be saved for later; for now, the dignity of silence was enough. His grandfather was still in his bed; the ambulance not yet having arrived. From the doorway, he looked like he was sleeping, but up close, he was different. The face once so full and resilient had sagged into a death mask, as if the invisible life force that animated it had a physical mass, and when that life force ceased to be, it drew away some of that mass, shrunk it. He thought Grandad looked hollow, and it almost took the legs out from under him, knowing right there and then that he would never speak to him again. Tom sank to his knees and, with his head resting on the corpse of his grandfather, let the tears come.

The funeral was well attended by the local community and paid for by the Caulfield family. This came as a small revelation to Tom, who wasn’t aware of any such arrangement before. His father told him the tradition went back to the eighteen hundreds. Why, he was uncertain of, his understanding being they just always had. A week later, it was Tom who went to the loft in Grandad’s cottage. Ben couldn’t bring himself to do it. No one had been up there for years it seemed. The dust and cobwebs happily taking up residence unchallenged. Most of the items looked like they’d find their way to the dump. There wasn’t that much, and he’d make an inventory first before shifting anything. At one edge, under a box of forgotten Christmas decorations, was a small suitcase. It looked ancient and may have been leather, Tom wasn’t sure. He tried the latches only to find it was locked. Then picked it up and felt something shift inside. Intrigued, Tom took it downstairs after making his inventory, then facetimed his father.

“Hey Dad, do you know where the keys are to Grandad’s little suitcase?”

“What suitcase?”

“This old leather one I found. It’s locked.” Tom pointed the phone’s camera at it.

“Got no idea. Have you checked all the drawers in the dresser yet? He kept more shite in there than Edmund Trebus.”

“Who?”

“You’ll have to google it. If they’re not in there then try his bedside cabinet. And Tom?”

“What?”

“Tell me what you find.”

“Of course.”

Tom rummaged in the dresser, amazed at the tat Gramps had collected over the years. One of several things Grandma used to nag him about. He imagined her words and sighed at the thought of them. After collecting all the keys he could find, Tom sat at the table, mechanically attempting the lock with the most likely. When he’d run out, he tried the bedside cabinet and found a few small keys on a ring. It looked promising and it was. Should’ve tried these first, he thought. The ancient air escaped the case. Some lingered in musty residence, impregnated onto the interior. Inside was a bundle of journals he thought might be his grandmother’s at first. Women were far more likely to write diaries. Weren’t they? Tom stared at the bundle for a couple of minutes before picking it up. It was bound with a simple cord, not ribbon, not feminine. He took out his phone and facetimed his father, showing him the journals.

“Can’t remember seeing those before, Son. Anything else in the case?”

“No, no ten-bob notes or white fivers like Grandad used to go on about.”

“Ask your mum if she knows anything about them.”

“Can’t you?”

“I’m at Frank’s sorting his Gator.”

“Tell the tightwad there are dealerships that repair stuff.”

“I know, but Frank thinks you’re speaking Greek when you mention it.”

Tom thought of old man Tucker on his quad, “Tightwad Tucker” as he was affectionately known, his sheepdogs bouncing around in the back, then rang off and called his mother. She could only muster a maybe. Poking around in her father-in-law’s loft wasn’t her idea of fun. It didn’t help much, as she couldn’t remember seeing the journals before. Tom hung up and eyed the knot in the string. Age made it impossible to untie, so he looked for scissors. Grandad’s sideboard obliged. As he cut the string, he felt a breeze sigh through the cottage. Enough to shut the living room door and caress the back of his neck, making the hairs stiffen in their follicles. He turned, half expecting to see someone standing behind him. The sensation was palpable, but there was no one. Of course there was no one. Tom opened the topmost journal to reveal elegant script. He could tell it was old before he spied the date, written at the top of the entry.

The language was archaic, but as he continued reading, he deciphered that a young woman had written it. Tom scanned the other journals and found they went in order, top down. He decided to take them home and read them at his leisure. It took him weeks; the drama and flights of fancy of the young woman sprawling across the pages, the language flowery. But as he read on, he noted the tone changing as it reached the last volume. The large, winding spiral of recollections became condensed into an ever-tightening coil. Its author was a daughter of the incumbent Earl Caulfield and it transpired she had an affair with the groundskeeper’s son. This secret was known only to the son’s mother at first. But, when the daughter became pregnant, her mother found out as well. Tom had never read Jane Austen’s work but imagined the journals would fit right in. As he neared the end, the sense of foreboding increased with the desperation in the girl’s writing.

When Tom turned the last page, he wanted to know more. His father and mother said they knew nothing. He couldn’t ask his grandparents. On his mother’s suggestion, he phoned the Earl’s butler, and as it transpired, Sir John would see him the following Saturday.

Tom had been to the manor house before but never on such an errand. He took the journals, protected in a small box. The place intrigued him, especially the portraits that decorated the walls. Browsing the two-dimensional faces that peered out from their canvasses, he imagined what their three-dimensional lives might have been like. Knowing all these people existed and walked around on the same floors as those present filled him with a kind of awe. It felt like they were making sure of its continuity. Marking time with their still, silent faces. Sir John, dressed in the country casuals of the landed gentry, saw him in the library. After initial pleasantries, Tom got straight down to business, pulling the journals out of the box.

“I found these while I was clearing out Grandad’s loft. I confess I’ve read them but I was very careful. They’re very old.”

Sir John looked at the journals, then at Tom, intrigued. He picked up the top one, opened it and scanned the page, before looking back at his guest.

“Where did you say you found these?”

“In Grandad’s loft, in an old suitcase. I never knew he had them, he’d never mentioned them to anyone.”

Tom couldn’t make out what was running through Sir John’s head. He thought it might be anger, but the silent mental cogs were processing a different emotion. John Caulfield eyed Tom with a resigned acceptance. Realising the man knew what he did made it pointless to fabricate a story. So he told him the truth.

“I thought your grandfather had destroyed these. Sit, Tom, make yourself comfortable.” From the doorway, as if summoned by a telepath, Sir John’s butler appeared with a tea tray, setting it on the table. Tom did as he was asked.

“Many years ago, your grandfather had a relationship with a maid who used to work in this house. It was she who found these diaries while clearing an attic room. They had been concealed, my guess is not for the first time, not in their original location, hidden so that the casual passerby would miss them, but not so well as to render them lost. She showed them to your grandfather, who in turn asked my father about them. My father was the kind of man who courted convention, Tom, he was a stiff traditionalist. He brushed them off as the ramblings of an irrational ancestor.”

“Are they?”

Sir John shrugged, “That depends on how far your imagination stretches. Your grandfather was an ox of a man in his prime, and as strong as one, but he was also gentle and placid, of simple desires and was content with his place in life. I suspect you may not be, and I don’t blame you for it. Your family has worked this estate for generations. They are part of its very fabric. I can see why someone like you might want to break away from it.” Sir John paused and fingered the cover of a journal. “These are the diaries of Florence May Caulfield. The eldest daughter and one of five children of the fourth Earl Caulfield. By all accounts headstrong and deeply romantic. You must have got a sense of that, reading them?”

Tom nodded, “Yes, I did, life must have been very difficult for someone like her. It took me a while to get through them all.”

Sir John smiled, “I can imagine. There is another journal, but it’s much shorter. After the tragedy, they were all meant to be destroyed but it seems they were hidden instead. How the final chapter came to be separated I’m not sure.”

“Will you tell me the story, fill in the blanks, so to speak?”

“If you want. It’s not entirely pleasant. Our ancestors regularly carried out acts we would consider barbaric today.” Sir John eyed Tom with solicitude, “How many times have you left my employment only to return, Tom?”

“A few, Sir John.”

“And you have always been welcomed back. Like your father before you.”

Tom looked at his employer but didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure what he was driving at.

“Florence Caulfield had an affair with a man called Thomas, the son of the groundskeeper, Arthur Wyatt. As you can imagine, this would be intolerable to the Earl’s family. When the pregnancy came to light, she was banished from ever seeing him again. In order that the Wyatt family remain employed and not turned out onto the street, the Earl made a pact with Arthur. He was to make sure the child did not survive...” Sir John paused to emphasise his next words. “But make it appear like a natural death. While Florence lay weak in her bed after the delivery, Kathleen Wyatt took the baby outside of the room where Arthur was waiting. Against her wishes, he grabbed the baby and told her to say nothing. Then he went away and smothered the child, returning the corpse to his distraught wife.

You can imagine how Florence felt with the news that her child had not survived. Of course, she had no idea it had been murdered. It would not have been so unusual in those days for an infant or mother to die in childbirth. The mortality rate was much higher. But it broke the poor girl’s heart, and she was already fragile. They buried the baby in an unmarked grave on the family plot. No more was to be said of it. Florence wouldn’t go to the burial, of course, she wouldn’t leave her room and her behaviour became more erratic. About two weeks later, and by complete chance, she overheard a conversation between the Wyatts. Kathleen, still bitter at what happened, was asking her husband how he could live with himself after what he had done. He told her they still had a roof over their heads and employment. Before the couple realised they had an eavesdropper, Florence also learnt where on the family plot they had interred her child.

Sir John paused again and studied the man in front of him. “It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine how she must have felt, learning the truth. That night was the last diary entry she ever made. From that, and from something Kathleen Wyatt said later, I’m certain the final tragedy took place that night. In the early hours, Florence got out of bed and, in the darkness, dressed only in her nightgown, found her way to her child’s grave. She clawed at the soil with her bare hands until she exhumed him, then wandered out into the estate until she came to one of the boundary walls. She must have removed a section of stones from it and placed the tiny corpse inside the cavity, before securing the tomb by carefully replacing the stones, a skill no doubt learnt watching her lover. After her vigil, her torn hands muddied and bleeding, Florence went to the lake and drowned herself. She was found the next morning by the head gardener. The family were bereft, her mother inconsolable; the burden of guilt lay heavy on all of them. The body of the child was never found. My ancestors wouldn’t have known the awful truth until the final diary entry was discovered.”

Sir John got up from his seat and went to a drawer set under one of the bookshelves. He took a journal from it and placed it on the table. It looked identical to the ones Tom had read.

“This wasn’t found immediately after Florence died; she’d hidden it. In a different place to the others. And it contains only one page of writing.” John Caulfield pushed the journal towards Tom, who shook his head.

“No, you read it.”

“I don’t need to, Tom, the words are seared into my brain.

“Malediction?”

“It’s archaic but the meaning is clear enough. It’s a curse, Tom, if you want to believe in such prophesies.”

“You mean she cursed our families and then did those things, hid her child’s body in the wall, committed suicide? But nobody takes curses seriously, do they?”

“Perhaps not… but look at our families and their history, their connection. I don’t believe in the supernatural, Tom, but there are plenty that do. Your grandfather was one of them.”

Tom studied his employer’s face. The weariness of it. He thought of all the times he had heard him bitch about money. The cost of the upkeep of the estate; the rotten marriages that seemed to plague his family. Wayward and profligate heirs. Then he thought of his own family. His own plight. Dazed by the revelation, Tom got up, thanked the Earl and shook his hand, then excused himself, leaving the room and manor house.

Outside, in the cold grey light, he paused on the doorstep, his mind bruised with the image of Florence Caulfield. As he walked away, he glimpsed the drystone wall that stretched off into the distance. Miles of it. Then he stopped. For a moment, the wall seemed to crowd in on him, taunting, and a dense resignation settled in his chest. His breathing laboured, as though the air was thick, viscous. He imagined the tiny bones buried somewhere within that wall. All those stones. Millions of them. How often he may have been close to them. Even disturbed them unknowingly or discarded them as animal remains. He thought of the times he had tried to escape the endless monotony of his work, only to return, unsuccessful from another venture. And as he stumbled on again, a cloying nausea beginning to rise inside, he felt a breeze caress his neck. The same breeze that sighed through his house the day he opened Grandad’s case. He felt it pass over him and through him. And it carried a sound, soft and faint. Like the whisper of a newborn’s last breath. The whisper of a mother’s last kiss.

The fateful whisper of death.