ghosts

The Manor House: Chapter 22

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Chapter 22: Eddie Thomson

            A knock at the door pulls Teresa out of her past.  She saves the chapter and shuts down the laptop before thumping downstairs.  Lord Braithewaite, dressed in a well-tailored suit, is standing on the doorstep. He holds a monogrammed leather briefcase in one hand, and with the other he removes a bowler hat from his head.  Teresa imagines for a wild moment that she has stepped into the bank scene from the movie Mary Poppins.

            “May I come in?” he asks.

            “Of course.”  Teresa gestures him inside, then rushes to clear a space on the sofa.  She sits in a chair opposite him.

            “I hope I haven’t disturbed your work,” he begins.

            “Not at all.  It was time for a break.”

            “Miss Salerno, I cannot tell you how important the document and the jewelry are to my family.  My curator friend in London confirmed the authenticity of the contents of the packet.  He is keeping the confession to see if he can discern the missing parts using all that fancy technology he has in his laboratory.”  He clears his throat and adjusts his shirt collar.

            Teresa opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it.  Lord Braithewaite is about to give a prepared speech.

            “Miss Salerno, my family and I wish to express our gratitude for your honesty and goodwill by offering you free lodging at the Manor for as long as you choose to stay.  I’ve spoken to Miss Micklewhite already.”

            “Why, Lord Braithewaite, that is most generous of you.”  Teresa hesitates, then says, “I do have a request, though.  When your friend completes his work with the confession, may I see the results?”

            “Well, hmmm, I don’t see why not.  I’m off to Kent to visit my nephew’s family, but I’ll give you a ring when I hear anything.  How is that?”

            “That’s fine.  Thank you.”

            At the door, Lord Braithewaite replaces his hat and walks away with a brisk, purposeful stride.  Teresa shakes her head and smiles at his transformation from the grubby gardener in a smashed hat to this ever-so-proper aristocrat.

            Teresa spends the afternoon touring a miniature pony farm near Exmoor.  She takes photographs of the shaggy, dog-sized horses and their shy foals.  Part of her feels appalled that humans take pride in distorting the majestic horse in this way.  She is almost ashamed to be so charmed by the tiny ponies.

            Visiting the farm with Teresa is a busload of nursing home residents.  Some are being pushed around in wheelchairs; some struggle over the uneven ground with walkers.  Teresa sees their wrinkled faces beaming as goats nuzzle their hands for treats.  One old woman in a wheelchair shrieks with laughter because a goat is chewing on her shoelaces.

            A sign proclaiming “Carriage Museum–this way” points to a huge barn.  Inside, Teresa finds a display of carriages and carts.  She saunters along in the dim shafts of light sprinkled with dust motes, peering at the cards in plastic frames that describe each vehicle.  In front of a heavy cart made of thick planks, she stops with a sharp drawing in of her breath.  Fumbling in her backpack for her camera, Teresa photographs the words:

                        Wagon–Circa 1790

                        Smugglers carried goods away from wrecked ships using sturdy carts like the one displayed here.

                        –donated by Lord Morris Braithewaite, Manor House, Mantecombe, Devonshire

            By the time Teresa returns to Mantecombe, it is almost seven o’clock.  The sky is still light as she enters the White Horse pub, but there is a brooding line of roiling clouds at the edge of the horizon and the wind is gusting.  Teresa orders a glass of dark ale and fish and chips.  The stained corner table where she sits exudes the odors of years of beer and smoke.  When the barman brings over her basket of steaming fried cod and potatoes, Teresa says, “Is Eddie Thomson here?”

            “That old grunion?”  The barman glances around at the handful of men seated in the pub. “Not here yet.  I’ll give you the nod when he comes in.”

            Teresa looks at her meal, grins, and shakes her head.  She can’t believe she’s eating this food.  Unhealthy it may be, but she loves the greasy, crisp fries, especially doused in vinegar.  Teresa does not need the barman’s wave to know Eddie Thomson when the fellow rolls into the pub.  He’s a crab of a man, hunched and grizzled.  With white hair and a scraggly, tobacco-stained beard, he’s dressed in an indefinable garment of an indefinable age and color.  Teresa rises and taps him on the shoulder.

            “Mr. Thomson?”

            “Oh, Mr. Thomson, is it?  And what can Mr. Thomson do for you?”  he says, grinning to show teeth like black and yellow piano keys.  His breath sends Teresa back two steps. 

            “I’d like to ask you about local history.  Wreckers, actually.”

            “Wreckers, is it?”  He fixes her with watery, pale blue eyes.  “Buy me a pint and give me a minute, see, to collect me thoughts.”

            Teresa signals to the barman who pulls a pint of ale and hands the glass to Eddie.  Eddie drags a chair over to Teresa’s table and straddles it backward.

            “Are you hungry, Mr. Thomson?  Would you like some dinner?” she asks.

            “This here’s me dinner,” says Eddie, draining half the glass.

            Teresa explains to Eddie that she is researching local history, and that she is staying at the Manor House.  At the mention of the Manor House, Eddie draws back and cuts his eyes aside with a grimace.  “Aye, that there’s a history, all right,” he says after a long pause.

            “What can you tell me about wreckers?” Teresa asks as Eddie tips up the last of his ale. 

            “For that telling, I’ll need another pint,” Eddie grins.  He wipes drops from his mustache.

            When he is settled in with his new glass, Eddie begins.  “Now the coastal folks hereabouts have made a good commerce from the tales of wreckers and smugglers and pirates and all.  That Daffy Du Maurie and her Jamaica Inn and all.  It’s good for the tourist trade.  But I can’t say the locals were great wreckers.  Nay, I would say there never was deliberate wrecking.  As for the false lights, there’s no evidence that such criminality ever took place here.”  Teresa senses she’s being hustled; that this is the image the locals prefer to offer to outsiders.

            “Then the story of George Braithewaite putting out false lights and wrecking the ship his daughter was on—you think it is a fabrication?”  Teresa is surprised.  Obviously, Eddie hasn’t heard of the discovery of George’s confession.

            “Braithewaite?  Now that one’s a bird of a different color,” Eddie frowns, then gives her a wink and adds, “I’ll need another glass for that tale.”

            Teresa has never intentionally gotten someone drunk, but it is obvious to her that she is playing a game whose price is dark ale.  She signals to Tommy, the barman, and fetches Eddie his pint.

            “Me great-great–I don’t know how many greats–grandfather was Frederick Thomson.  He was with that Braithewaite fellow on the night the ship hit the rocks.  Some say George Braithewaite put out a false light, but as I heard the story, it was a storm that fetched the Maeve onto the rocks.”  Eddie stops for a swallow of ale.  His eyes are clouding; his nose is red and his words are blurring at the edges.

            “The tale gets gruesome now.  Are you sure you want to hear it?” he asks with a leer.

            “Quite sure.”

            “Frederick found that maid, Margaret, between rocks on the shore.  Her face was battered and bruised beyond recognition.  He thought surely she was dead.  She sported some few jewels, but her fingers were curled up so cold and stiff that Frederick couldn’t get them off.  George came over, took out his knife so as to cut off her hand to get at the bracelet and rings.  When he made the first cut across her wrist, she gave out a moan.  There was George, all affrighted, wrapping up her wrist in his kerchief, and her bleeding out her life, if she wasn’t to have lost it already.  He and Frederick carried her up to the cart and laid her amongst the casks.  They thought they might have a reward from her people if she lived.  If not, they’d give her back to the sea.”

            Eddie pauses to drink.  The pub is filling up with the evening crowd.  Three musicians are setting up their instruments on a platform in the back.  Teresa waits, hoping to hear Eddie out before the music begins.

            “George took himself off away to the Manor with his cart, but Frederick, my great-great, he went back to the beach for more wreck.  That’s when he heard the crying and he found the babe.”

            “Lucas?  Margaret’s baby boy?”  Teresa was aghast.  Could this be true?

            “Aye, the poor laddie’s legs was crushed.  He was alive, but barely.”

            “And?  What happened then?”  Teresa feels her own eyes must be wide as salad plates.  Eddie shoves himself backward out of his chair.

            “I’m off to the loo,” he says.  He sways across the pub floor to the men’s room.  Teresa can barely restrain herself from following him.  She bites at a hangnail and tears it down until her finger bleeds.  At last, Eddie lurches out of the men’s room door, but then he leans on the bar to chat with another regular.  He appears to have forgotten Teresa.  After several minutes, she gets up and coaxes him back to the table with another pint and a bowl of peanuts.

            “Now where was I?”  Eddie says.  He tries to crack open a peanut shell but his fingers are rubbery. 

            “Frederick Thomson found the baby and he was alive.”  Teresa takes a peanut and opens it for him.  She shells peanuts and hands them over as he continues.

            “So me great-great what-all granddad takes the boy to his mam, who’s a baby-catcher and a bit of a healer for the locals.”  He crunches on some peanuts while Teresa resists shaking his shoulders to make the story come out faster.

            “The babe lived, only his legs never healed up proper.  They was bent like two sickles.  Even so, you’d think that George Braithewaite would have been grateful.  You’d think he’d have taken his grandson in.  But he shunned the boy, refused to raise him.  Said he’d already killed his own daughter, and how could he face her son with such a great sin on his head.”

            “It does seem rather heartless, considering how he loved Margaret,” Teresa says, almost to herself.  She remembers the vivid dreams of the loving father with the pony.

            “Aye, he loved her, all right, but George Braithewaite was an odd one.  Me mam once told me she heard say that he had two families, a wife at the Manor, and another in Dorset.  The one wife died young and he brought in the other, smooth as glass.  Neighbors were gobsmacked, and gave them Braithewaites a wide berth.”

            “But what about the boy, Lucas?”

            “Ah, that’s the great family secret.  What happened to the boy?”  He leans forward and his breath is so foul that Teresa blinks several times.  “If I tell you the truth, you’ll not breathe a word?”

            “I can’t–” She is about to say she can’t promise silence, she’s a writer, but he interrupts.

            “The Thomsons, Frederick and his wife, took the babe in, bandy legs and all, and they raised him as their own.  Named him Jonah, since he survived the sea, you know.  He turned out a fine, clever fellow, too.  And me very own so many greats granddad.  Me granddad!”

            Eddie’s brows lower and he scowls.  “Aye, and I’m the rightful heir, you see.  The rightful heir to the Manor House.”  He sits up and slams his palm on the table.  Teresa jumps back and some others glance over at Eddie.

            Eddie points a gnarled finger at Teresa.  “If it weren’t for that lily-livered, slithery eel of a two-timing bigamist, George Braithewaite, I’d be living in comfort in me old age!”  Eddie pushes himself to his feet, stumbling sideways so he has to catch on to the chair.  “Mine!  It shoulda been mine!” he yells.

            One of the men at the bar stands and comes over to Eddie.  “‘S’allright, now, Eddie, me boy.  You’ve had enough for this evening.  Let’s get you home.”

            Teresa sinks down into the dark corner while the man helps Eddie out of the pub.  Her head is aching with the fright of his outburst and the thoughts that are swirling in disjointed words in her mind.  So Lucas lived.  And George Braithewaite did have two wives!  Slowly Teresa gets to her feet.  She pays the bill and drives back toward the Manor House.

            At the top of the hill, before turning into the drive, Teresa stops the car and crosses over to the edge of the bluff.  She can see the lights of the town, but a bank of billowing inky clouds obscures the moon and stars.  The wind swirls and buffets her.  She can just make out bursts of white water as the rising waves smash against the jagged rocks near the shore.  As the rain begins, Teresa scuttles back to her car.  This will be a wild storm tonight, she thinks.  I wonder if the cradle in Margaret’s room will move.

The Manor House: Chapter 21

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Chapter 21: Scandal

            Cousin Alberto’s undoing was set in motion by a part-time dockworker named Juan Alvarez.  He came to the shipping office one morning when Angelina was looking over the accounts. 

            “Senor Alberto owes me money,” he said.

            “He does?” said Angelina.  “Well, let’s have a look.  What day would that have been?”

            “September eighteenth.  We loaded three trucks to go to the Jersey factory and then we put the special crate onto his truck.”

            “Special crate?”

            “Si, you know.  The one that goes to the warehouse in Brooklyn.”

            “The warehouse in Brooklyn?”

            “Pero si, senora.  Sometimes I drive the truck myself,” said Juan.

            Angelina masked her astonishment.  Later she told me that this was the moment she knew that Alberto was carrying on some sort of illegal business.  To Juan she said, “Yes, of course, the warehouse in Brooklyn.  What is the address again?  So I don’t have to look it up?”  She flipped through the ledger as if searching for a page.  Juan told her.  Angelina paid him what he claimed he was owed, in cash, and watched him leave.  Then she called the police.

            The next morning, Salerno Enterprises made the headlines of every newspaper:

            Busted! Salerno Enterprises Traffics in Drugs

            In the warehouse, the police found hundreds of containers of olive oil.  Inside each container, plastic bags of heroin floated in our famous extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil.  When all the bags were collected, the police estimated their street value at over three million dollars.  Under the headline, Cousin Alberto’s mug shot accompanied a photograph of the officers opening the containers.  After Cousin Alberto was handcuffed and driven away, the police arrested Father as well.  He was released on bail the same afternoon.  Alberto was not allowed to post bail; the police were afraid his partners would kill him before the case ever got to court.

            When the cab from the airport dropped me in front of our apartment building, I pushed my way through a cluster of reporters.  I made it into the elevator before any of them realized who I was.  The atmosphere inside the apartment was thicker and heavier than it was after Junior died.  Angelina was at the office.  Father hunched in his reclining chair in the living room, an unlit cigar between his fingers.

            “Oh,” he said when he saw me, “you’re home.  Did you hear?  Your cousin has ruined us.  The Salerno name is mud.  No, worse than mud.  It’s slime.  It’s shit.”

            I’d had a long flight from Italy, with a five-hour layover in London.  I was bleary-eyed and feeling nauseous.  All I could reply was, “Yes, Father.  I’m sorry.”

            He didn’t seem to need more words than that.  He gave a grumbling cough, then turned his gaze to the wide window with the view of Central Park.  I dragged my suitcase down the hall to my old bedroom.  Without taking time to unpack, I lay down on the bed, pulled up the quilt and fell asleep.

            Angelina woke me in the late afternoon.  She’d been at the office all day, doing damage control.

            “How bad is it?” I asked, sitting up slowly.  Sometimes I could trick my stomach into remaining calm if I leaned back at an angle with pillows behind me. 

            Angelina shook her head.   “It’s bad.  Gristedes and some other high-end stores have canceled their orders.  They’re saying that Portuguese olive oil is cheaper.”

            “Are we going under?”

            “No.  It will be tough for a while, but I think the car dealerships and the rental properties will keep the business in the black until this blows over.”  Angelina patted my belly.  “But you, Teresa.  How are you?”

            “I’m OK.”

            “A little sick, maybe?  Tired all the time?”  She smiled.

            “Like I could sleep half the day and stare at the wall for the other half.”

            “So tell me,” she said, “who is the father?”

            I told Angelina about Giancarlo, how we met at an art gallery opening.  I showed her the only picture I had of him, leaning against a fountain with his curly hair rumpled, his head thrown back, his sensuous mouth laughing.  His arms were outstretched wide, as if he were embracing the world.

            “Mmmm, he’s very good-looking,” Angelina murmured.  “You will have a beautiful baby.”  She gazed at the photograph for another long moment, then handed it back to me.  “Actually, Teresa, I’m more worried about Anthony than the business.  The business has a good foundation.  It will survive.  But your father—he is so depressed.  No one in Italy will talk to him except Uncle Gio.  Gio says that if the state of New York doesn’t execute Alberto, he’ll fly over to New York and do it himself.”

The Manor House: Chapter 20

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Chapter 20: The Church Records

            The memory of that difficult time is enough to interrupt Teresa at her writing desk.  She goes downstairs, saying aloud, “Hey, Margaret, I think I’ll see if the church records show anything about your mother Eliza, or that wrecker F. Thomson.” 

            Teresa smiles to realize she now accepts Margaret’s presence.  She can even tell when the ghost is in the same room by the damp chill that accompanies her.

            Stepping out of her door, Teresa catches a glimpse of a reporter interviewing Miss Micklewhite.  Avoiding the main path to the car park, Teresa goes through the garden around the rear of the cottages.  She encounters Trish carrying a bundle of dirty linens to the laundry room. 

            “Well, you’ve surely put us on the map!” Trish says, grinning.

            “Not me.  It was Margaret who spilled the tea into the drawer.”

            “You didn’t tell us that,” Trish says.

            “I couldn’t, not with all those reporters around.  Who would believe that a ghost showed me where to find George Braithewaite’s confession?”

            Trish laughs.  “Anyone who’s ever worked here wouldn’t have a problem.”

            “Say, Trish, which church is old enough to have records of the 1700s?”

            “That would be St. Nicholas by the war memorial.  You can’t miss it.”

            “Thanks.  Wish me luck.”

            Trish nods.  “Sure, ta.”

            Teresa waves goodbye.  She manages to slip away in her car without being spotted by Miss Micklewhite or the reporter.  Miss Micklewhite is having a fine time with the press. She has more stamina than I do, Teresa thinks.

            Teresa finds the church easily, but parking the car is a challenge.  Despite the cool, cloudy weather, the town is crowded with people on summer holiday.  She ends up walking most of Main Street from Sainsbury’s small car park.  The tall, weathered wooden doors to the church are locked.  Under a plastic frame, the hours of services are posted on a small card.  Teresa walks around the side.  She discovers a newer building, an addition with a low roof.  Light shines through the slatted blinds of the window.  Teresa knocks, then opens the door and steps in.

            A stern-looking middle-aged woman sits at the reception desk, working on an ancient computer.  “Yes?” she says.  She taps a few more keys before turning around.

            “Hello.  I’m Teresa Salerno.  I’m staying up at the Manor House.  I’m doing some research for a story about the Manor.  I was hoping you might have church records dating back to 1700.”

            The woman straightens up her shoulders.  She looks at Teresa over her bifocals with a slight frown.  “Do you have a letter of introduction?”

            “A letter of introduction?” Teresa repeats.

            “Yes, from your sponsoring institution?”

            “Well, no.  I’m a freelance writer,” Teresa says.  The woman resembles Teresa’s tenth grade social studies teacher, a battle-ax named Sister Mary Agnes.

            The two women are staring at each other when the noise of a scraping chair breaks the confrontation.  Behind the secretary, a door opens.  Out steps a broad-shouldered, balding man in a clerical collar.  He looks to be in his sixties.  His cheeks are ruddy; he wears gold-rimmed glasses, and he is smiling.

            “My, my, what a pleasure!  You are the American who found George Braithewaite’s papers!”  He shakes Teresa’s hand while turning to the secretary.  “Don’t you remember, Mrs. Allston?  We saw it on the telly this morning.  Quite remarkable!  Come in, come in.”  He gestures her into his office.  Mrs. Allston gives an audible sniff as she returns to her computer.

            Once they are seated, Teresa in a capacious chair of brown, cracked leather, and the man in a creaking swivel chair behind a battered desk, he says, “Now, I’m Father Michael.  What can I do for you, Miss—–?”

            “Salerno.  Teresa Salerno.  I was wondering if there are records dating from the 1700s to the present.  I’m doing some research—“

            “Yes, yes, we have the registers for the parish going back to 1710 or so.  You’re writing about the Manor House?”

            “Not yet, but I hope to,” Teresa replies.  “I’m sorry, I don’t have a letter of introduction.  I suppose I could get my editor—“

            “No matter, no matter,” Father Michael interrupts.  He bounds out of his chair. 

            He’s pretty spry for a senior, Teresa thinks, then remembers her own age with a grimace. 

            “Follow me,” the priest says.  Teresa has to quicken her steps to keep up with Father Michael.

            On the return drive from St. Nicholas to the Manor House, Teresa feels her head spinning with dates and questions.  Beside her on the car seat rest xeroxed copies of several pages of the church register.  Mrs. Allston was far from happy that Father Michael permitted Teresa to copy the fragile pages.

            The first surprise she found was that there was no record of the death of Eliza Braithewaite, Margaret’s mother.  Her birthdate was there, the tenth of August, 1746.  So was Margaret’s birth on the twenty-fourth of April, 1767.  In her mind, Teresa’s logic wages war against her conviction that the dreams were authentic windows into Margaret’s past.  If Teresa’s dreams are to be believed, Eliza and her infant son died in 1777.  The death of a Mary Braithewaite is entered as the fourteenth of January, 1787.  Teresa also found an entry for a Josiah Braithewaite, son of George and Mary, who died in 1851.  She can’t wait to get back to the Manor and work up a timeline.

            Teresa negotiates a hairpin curve in the road and finds herself enveloped in fog.  She can barely see the road.  The mist is white and thick.  With the wipers on high speed, Teresa still feels blind.  Her heart is beating double-time; her hands are clammy.  Even on a clear night, the road from the town is full of tight curves with steep drops and no guardrail.  A deep booming sound vibrates the car.  Teresa stifles a scream.  She realizes that it is the foghorn.  The car’s headlights show her a shadow moving forward in front of her on the road.  It appears to be an animal.  Teresa peers at the shape, leaning so far forward over the steering wheel that her nose almost touches the windshield.  It is a horse, a small one, and there is a man walking beside it.  The man waves his arm, a gesture that seems to mean Teresa should follow.  She does, being careful to stay close enough to keep the horse in sight, but not so close as to frighten it.

            After creeping along behind for what seems to be hours, Teresa recognizes the barn that comes before the Manor House drive.   She exhales in a rush of relief.  The fog clears slightly as she makes the turn onto the gravel.  She glimpses a tan pony and a man wearing knee breeches and a tricorn hat.  Then the fog closes in again.  Teresa can no longer see the horse or the man; they have faded into the fog.  But she has recognized Maggie’s father, the man from her dreams.  Even the tan pony is familiar.  Teresa is overtaken by a shiver so violent that she has to stop the car. 

            “That’s it!” she says, once her breath is returns to normal.  “I’m leaving tomorrow!”

            She puts the car back into gear and soon the dim lights of the Manor House car park glow up ahead.  Once safely indoors with a cup of tea, Teresa feels steady again.  She spreads out her papers on the kitchen table. Taking a clean piece of paper, she plots out the family tree of a man named Frederick Thomson whose dates correspond to Margaret’s time period.  He could be the F. Thomson who was mentioned in George Braithewaite’s confession.  She notes with excitement that a descendant named Edward Thomson is alive.  Teresa gathers up her papers and goes to find Miss Micklewhite. 

            Miss Micklewhite is in the Manor House office, taking a reservation for a large tour group.  She waves her fingers at Teresa and continues to converse on the telephone.  Teresa decides to wait outside in the courtyard.  The fog has lifted as quickly as it came.  Now sunlight is beaming down in shafts between scudding clouds.  Ted is opening the tearoom, so Teresa walks over.

            “Hi, Ted.”

            “Morning.”  He nods as he raises the metal shutter of the service window.

            “Ted, do you by any chance know of a gentleman named Edward Thomson?”

            “Eddie Thomson?  Sure, he’s an old timer, been in Mantecoombe all his life.”

            “Do you know where he lives?  I’d like to ask him some questions about local history.”

            “Don’t know where he lives,” Ted says, latching the shutters with sturdy metal hooks.

            “Oh,” Teresa’s shoulders droop. 

            “But you can find him at the White Horse.”

            Teresa has seen the pub’s sign on Main Street.  “Would he be there now?”

            “Are you joking?”  Ted snorts out a laugh.  “He’ll be sleeping off last night’s beer until sundown.  Best to look him up around seven or eight of the evening, before he gets too muddled.”

            “Thanks, Ted.”  Teresa smiles to herself.  He’s a gruff one, Ted is, but helpful if you can endure the prickles.

            After a quick lunch, Teresa returns to her writing desk.  It is becoming harder to focus on her own memoir; she is so wrapped up in the detective work of Margaret’s story.  On entering the bedroom, Teresa feels the wet chill that indicates Margaret is near.

            “Oh, Margaret!” Teresa sighs, sinking into the chair.  “I wish you could just tell me what happened.  Why was your mother buried without a church record?  Where did Mary come from?  And that was your father out there on the road today, wasn’t it?  How many ghosts are at the Manor, anyway?  Do you guys have parties?”

            Teresa turns on her laptop, rereads her last chapter, and says to the chill air, “OK, I have to work. I can’t start your story until this is done.  Could you maybe go haunt the parlor for a while?  You’re making it cold in here.”  Surprisingly, a few minutes later, the room has filled with the warmth of the afternoon sun.

The Manor House: Chapter 19

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Chapter 19: Remembering Italy

            Teresa takes her hands off the keyboard of her laptop and lets them fall heavily in her lap.  While Cousin Alberto was being arrested and charged, Teresa was in Italy.  She remembers when Debo called her in Florence with the news.

            “Father is taking it really hard,” Debo told Teresa.  “Maybe you should come home.”

            The trip to Italy was Teresa’s graduation present from Angelina and Father.  Teresa had obtained her master’s degree in May.  She had sublet her apartment for three months and signed up for courses in Italian and Renaissance art in Florence. 

            After she said goodbye to Debo, and hung up the phone, Teresa went to the balcony of her pensione and leaned on the railing.  She felt guilty about the noncommittal reply she gave to Debo.  The thought of returning home to New York made her feel sick with fear, almost as nauseated as she felt each morning, for Teresa was pregnant.

            The father of the child she carried was Giancarlo, a friend of her cousin, Amalia.  At the news of her pregnancy, Giancarlo had put up his long-fingered artist’s hands as if he were warding off evil.  “No baby,” he said in English.  Teresa wept; he kissed her on both cheeks, went to his studio and didn’t answer his phone.  He never responded to another one of her calls.  Two days later, Teresa finally was able to contact her cousin. 

            “But didn’t he tell you?” Amalia said.  “Giancarlo went to Poitiers.  He’s working in a sculpture studio.  Some famous sculptor I’ve never heard of.”

            Looking out of her window at the Manor House, Teresa can almost see the street in Florence.  She recalls the scent of lemon blossoms on the tree in the courtyard of the pensione.  Depending on the weather, the fragrance of lemon traded places with the odor from the outdoor toilet.  Beyond the courtyard wall was a winding cobbled street lined with narrow houses of tan and golden stonework.  Every house had a balcony, and most were festooned with hanging baskets of flowers: pink geraniums, trailing purple petunias, blue lobelia, and fuchsias like ballerinas in white and magenta tutus.

            Teresa spent several days in an agony of indecision.  Finally the fear of giving birth alone in a foreign country was greater than the fear of facing her family.  She called Angelina.

            “Oh, my darling Teresa!” Angelina said.  “Of course you must come home.  We’ll make Debo’s old room into a nursery.  How soon can you get a flight?  Oh, Maria madre di Dio, I’m going to have a grandchild!”

            “Should I tell Father?”

            “Don’t say anything yet.  Let me think about it first,” Angelina said.  “Maybe it’s best to wait until you start to show.”

            “God bless Angelina,” Teresa says out loud. She was right to conceal Teresa’s condition. King Olive was embroiled in the scandal whirling around Cousin Alberto and Salerno Enterprises.  In the end, he died before Teresa began wearing maternity clothes.

The Manor House: Chapter 12

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Chapter 12: Ghost Writing

            Teresa shivers.  The bedroom is chilly and damp.  She supposes it’s the sea air.  She pauses to go downstairs to make some tea and get her sweatshirt from where she left it on the sofa.  When she returns to her desk, as is her habit, she rereads the last paragraph she wrote.  She sucks in her breath.  The words on the screen now read:

            I waited until YOU the sound of his footsteps receded WRITE  into the echoing MY tunnel. STORY

            Teresa sinks down until her head rests on the back of the chair.  She holds her hand over her pounding heart, takes a deep breath. 

            “OK, Margaret.  I assume you’re in here and you are listening.  You want me to write your story?  How do you propose I do that?” 

            A chill runs up Teresa’s arm, as if it passed into a dewy spider’s web.  Her eyes dart around the room.  She sees nothing unusual, no mysterious shadow, no floating mist.  Teresa puts her head in her hands, rubs her eyes, stares at the screen.  It hasn’t changed.  The words are still there in caps between her own.  YOU WRITE MY STORY.  She thinks about the August deadline for this article about her father.  She goes back over the events of the past two days, the locked doors, the tricks with the electricity, the heavy sorrow hanging in Margaret’s room in the Manor House.  It would be a sad story to write, but the plot is compelling: danger, romance, loss. 

            “I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” Teresa thinks.  She deletes Margaret’s writing from the last paragraph and saves the morning’s work on the hard drive.  Then, just as a precaution against a meddling spirit, she saves everything on a flashdrive.

            Teresa takes in a long breath, blows it out so that her gray-streaked bangs spray up and stay feathered across her crown.

            “Margaret, if you’re listening, here’s the deal.  I’ll think about writing a story, but you must find a way to get the facts to me.  I’m sure you don’t want me making it up.  And for the last time, stay off my computer!”

            Teresa shuts down the laptop.  She has a quick lunch of leftover spaghetti, grabs her Michelin guide and steps out into a mizzling rain.  It’s not quite drippy enough to require an umbrella, but not light enough to be categorized as fog off the ocean.  Outside, on the way to the car park, Teresa meets the Dutch family carrying their luggage.  Stefan gives her a curt nod.  He is scowling, holding a duffel bag in each hand.

            Teresa comes up beside Rhoda.  “You’re leaving?  I thought you were here for five days.”

            Rhoda’s expression is solemn; there is a glint of fear in her eyes.  Stefan turns.

            “We cannot stay here to be molested at night.”

            “Molested?”  Teresa’s eyes widen at the strong word.

            “Yes, in the night, we could not sit up in our bed.  The girls were crying, and we were pushed down into the pillow.”

            Rhoda continues, “Then, when finally I could get up, I went to the girls’ room.  They were uncovered and crying in their sleep.  I covered them and two hours later they were uncovered again and shivering.” 

            “And you think that it was the gh—“

            “SSSHH!”  Stefan gestures to Teresa with his finger over his lips.   “The children!”  He indicates Tom and the little girls with his chin.

            “Oh.  Well, I’m sorry to see you go,” Teresa says after an awkward silence.

            “I hope you have a more pleasant stay than we have had,” Stefan says.

            Teresa just nods, not knowing how to respond.  Instead of continuing to the car park, she turns onto the path to the Tea Shop to buy a scone and a cup of tea to go.  Ted is sweeping up under the picnic tables.

            “Good morning, Ms. Salerno.  Where are you off to on this misty morning?”  Ted is a tall fellow with a beer belly that bulges out over his jeans.  He affects a cowboy look.  The buckle on his leather belt is a brass buffalo head, and he wears a cowboy shirt with snaps, a neckerchief, and boots with worn-down heels.

            “I thought I’d go to Killerton House.  But I just saw the Dutch family leaving.”

            “Aye. The gentleman demanded his money back.  Miss Micklewhite was quite put out.  She thinks Margaret took offense at the guy’s remarks.”

            “About there being no scientific evidence for the existence of ghosts?”  Teresa cannot help smiling.

            “Exactly.”  Ted smiles too.  “Herself is particular about the folks who stay here.  Mostly she just plays with the utilities, but she can do worse.”

            “Has she ever caused serious harm?”

            “Unh.”  Ted reaches under a table with his broom.  He turns away from Teresa and leaves her staring at his back.

            “Hmm,” Teresa narrows her eyes.  Was that a yes or no?  Obviously, the topic is closed as far as Ted is concerned, but later she’ll see if Trish is more forthcoming.

            With her tea and scone in hand, Teresa sets out again for the car park.  The Dutch family is gone.  The dry rectangle where their car had been is turning dark with the damp.

            As Teresa drives, she keeps confusing the turn signal with the lever for the windshield wipers.  It’s hard enough, Teresa thinks, to be driving a stick shift on the wrong side of the road.  Add in rain and windshield wipers and she feels like she needs two more hands. 

The Manor House: Chapter 11

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Chapter 11: Mother

            After Junior died, my father was never the same.  He had Junior’s Purple Heart medal framed.  It hung above the living room mantle with a photograph of Junior in uniform.  I was still living at home, attending college.  I remember feeling such relief each morning when I shut the door on that sad house.  I’d stay in the library studying, hoping that my parents would be asleep or out when I got home.  Sometimes, I’d smell my father’s cigar when I was taking off my coat in the foyer.  He would be sitting in the living room, slumped in his recliner.  A half-smoked Cubana between his fingers, he’d swirl port in a glass and stare at Junior’s picture.  He appeared bulky and toad-like hunched in his chair, a bit reminiscent of Winston Churchill.  I tiptoed past the doorway, loathe to disturb him, even though I knew in truth he wouldn’t notice me if I stomped through like an elephant.

            About six months after Junior died in Vietnam, I discovered that my mother was having an affair with Cousin Alberto.  It happened like this.  I had stayed late at the library.  My friend, Larissa, and I took the subway downtown.  I got off at my stop and waved to Larissa through the closing train door.  I started up the long flight of stairs to the street.  In my mind I was still going over the points of the essay I was writing about The Brothers Karamazov.  I saw the couple at the top of the stairs, embracing shadows backlit by the neon lights of Mario’s Pizzeria.  Something about their posture tugged me out of my Russian musings.  Then I recognized my mother’s red burnt-out velvet scarf with the long fringe.  My heart halted, jumped, and pulsed in my throat.  I stood in the darkness of the stairway waiting, watching.  They kissed, drew apart, kissed again.  I saw the man’s face: Cousin Alberto.  My thoughts came in disjointed fragments.  Cousin Alberto!  He had to be at least a decade younger than my mother.   And what a creep, after all my father did for him, bringing him over from Italy, giving him a job at the company.  He even rented an apartment to Alberto, cheap. 

            Finally, the two went their separate ways.  Mother clicked off down the street in her four-inch heels.   Cousin Alberto turned and came slap-slap-slap down the subway steps.  I froze against the tiled wall.  It was cold on my back.  Our eyes met.  He recognized me, then cut his eyes away.  I waited until the sound of his footsteps receded into the echoing tunnel.  Then I followed my mother home.

The Manor House: Chapter 10

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Chapter 10: Night

            Teresa looks at the clock on her laptop.  It is late, 11:40.  She has been writing for over two hours.  She rubs the back of her neck, rolls her shoulders.  With the computer shut down, Teresa gets ready for bed.  She makes sure the flashlight is on the nightstand before turning off the bedside lamp. 

            Sometime before dawn she is awakened by a dream.  Unlike most of her dreams, this one is clear and realistic, not murky with nonsensical events.  At first in the dream, she is at the park with her father, a stocky, swarthy man with thick black eyebrows.  Then the man changes into a taller, leaner person with brown hair and piercing blue eyes.  He is holding the reins of a small tan horse.  The Teresa of the dream knows him as her father.  His love for her lights up his eyes like small flames.  He lifts her up onto the butterscotch pony and begins to lead her around the circle of green grass. 

            “Oh, Da,” she says to the man.  ‘Is she mine to keep?”

            “Yes, my little love, she’s yours to keep.”

            Teresa awakens with her cheeks wet with tears.  She feels for the light switch.  Her chest is aching with yearning for this man, this dream father she adores whose eyes are alight with love.  Oh, how she longed to see that look in Father’s eyes.  Teresa wipes her face on the edge of the sheet. 

            I tried so hard, she thinks, but Junior got it all.  She recalls Junior as he was when he joined the Army.  He was a head taller than Father, with smoldering black eyes and a shock of wavy brown hair.  When not in uniform, he always stood with an attitude, hips cocked, thumbs in his belt loops.  He’d been a handsome man.  His death drew a dark curtain over all their lives.

            Teresa lies awake until she hears the birds begin their dawn symphony.  Two cups of tea help to chase away the night fog, yet the heaviness of loss is hard to dispel.  She decides to walk about the grounds before her morning work session.  The wrought-iron garden gate is open, and the gardener is kneeling on one of those kneepads avid gardeners like to use.  He is wearing the same crushed felt hat, but the pipe is absent.

            “Good morning,” she says, even though the morning still feels soggy and disjointed. 

            “Ah, good morning to you.  A fellow early bird, I see.”

            “Yes.  I’m Teresa.  Staying in the Garden View Suite.”

            “Yes, yes.  The writer from America.”   He removes his earth-smudged right glove and holds out his hand.  “Names Braithewaite.  Morris Braithewaite.”  His fingers are calloused and dry; it’s like holding stale toast.  In the bright morning light, Teresa makes him out to be at least seventy-five, maybe much older.  He has that leathery look of folks who have spent years in harsh weather.    Teresa is startled by the name he offers. 

            “Braithewaite?  As in the smuggler family that Margaret belonged to?”

            “The very same.  My grandfather bought back the property during the Great Depression.  Land was going for a song then.”  His eyes twinkled.  “But we’ve given up the wrecking, at least for the time being.”

            Teresa smiles with him.  “Did you grow up here at the Manor House?”

            “Oh, no.  Just spent holidays here.  It was a bit too rustic for my taste.  That was before the museum, before the cottages were added on.”  Mr. Braithewaite pulls his pipe and a lighter out of his breast pocket. Teresa watches as he sucks the flame into the tobacco until it is well-lit.    Mr. Braithewaite raises the pipe.  “My only vice,” he says.

            “And Margaret, the ghost.  Have you encountered her?”

            “Never.  But I keep my dress sword underneath the bed.  Deters intruding spirits.”

            “I’d like to hear more about the Manor.  Sometime.  If you’re willing,” Teresa says.

            “Certainly. You can find me here most mornings.  It’s good for me to take a bit of a rest and have a chat.  These old knees are not what they used to be. “

            “Thanks.  Well, I should go back to my work.  It’s nice meeting you, Mr. Braithewaite.”

            “Likewise.  Ta.”  He salutes her with the stem of his pipe, then lowers himself back onto his gardener’s knee pad.

The Manor House: Chapter 9

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Chapter 9: Junior

            I had to be perfect.  If I were perfect, my father would love me again.  I obeyed my teachers to the letter.  I got top grades, even in math, a subject that caused great agonies once I reached sixth grade.  But King Olive spent less and less time at home.  He went to Italy two or three times a year, often for several weeks.  Sometimes my mother went with him.  After the twins were born, we moved into a big apartment on Central Park West.   We children always had a governess to look after us and a housekeeper to cook and clean.  The little girls, Dahlia and Deborah, barely knew Father at all.  On his part, he could never put the right girl’s name on the right face.  Junior and I called them Dolly and Debo.  Junior liked to tease them by holding a treat or a teddy bear out of reach until they wailed in frustration.  I became their protector, especially if the governess at the time proved to be too harsh.

            One governess, a young French woman named Monique, was our favorite.  She was kind and patient.  She never hit anyone, not even Junior, and he used to get into terrible mischief.  He liked to throw bags of garbage on to the people below our sixth story window.  While I was at the library, he tied the twins to their bedpost.  Once he locked them out on the fire escape when it was raining.  

            One day we were walking with Monique in Central Park.  I noticed some mothers watching us and whispering as we passed by.  Their eyes traveled up and down, evaluating our clothing.

            “Monique,” I said, “is Father rich?”

            “Yes, I think he would be considered rich,” she answered.

            “Very rich?” I persisted. 

            “I would say so.  He has the company Salerno, and the car dealerships.  He owns your apartment building and some others, too, yes?”

            It was true. I glanced again at the staring women with their narrowed eyes and felt my cheeks get hot.  The little fur-lined hat that I loved for its softness suddenly felt itchy and conspicuous.  I took it off.

            The society section of the newspaper began to show photographs of my parents at concerts and gallery openings.

            “Anthony Salerno, known as King Olive, and his lovely wife, Adela, attended the opening night of Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera House.”

            “Anthony Salerno, King Olive, shakes hands with the president of General Motors.” 

            “Adela Salerno, wife of Anthony Salerno (King Olive) cuts the ribbon on the season’s latest model Fiat just arrived at Salerno’s Fine Cars.”

            Junior was in sixth grade and I was in tenth grade when he was kicked out of the public school.  The upshot of that was Catholic school for all four of us.  It was devastating for me to start anew in my second year of high school.  At this point in our lives, Junior and I fought constantly.  I was convinced that the girls at our new school avoided me because I was Junior’s sister, and his reputation had preceded him.  Yet, after some weeks, I made a few friends and showed myself to be a star pupil.

            Father believed the nuns would straighten Junior out, but they didn’t.

            “Why can’t you be like Teresa?” Sister Margareta asked Junior every time he was caught. 

            Junior just scowled and mumbled and concocted a worse transgression.  He peed out the window of the boys’ bathroom, plugged up the toilets with paper towels to cause floods, and started food fights in the lunchroom.  Junior never lied about what he had done. He admitted guilt with a cold glitter in his eyes.  When Father was home, he would yell at Junior in English and Italian.  Then he’d spank Junior with a belt, but after a few whacks he’d drop the belt and take Junior in his arms, both of them weeping.  “You’re my only son, my right eye.  Make me proud of you, Junior.  Be a good boy.”

            My mother no longer worked in the Salerno office.  Father had rented space in a building on Fifth Avenue.  He had a secretary, Mrs. Romano.  He brought one of Uncle Gio’s sons, Alberto, from Italy, and trained him to be his assistant.  Without secretarial work to do, Mother played bridge, ate out with friends, or went shopping.  She did not spend more time with us.

            When I was a senior in high school, Junior did something seriously bad.   He was fourteen.  All I knew at the time was that it involved a girl in tenth grade, alcohol, and the police.  He did it on the day of my graduation.  I remember sitting on the stage in my white polyester robe and mortarboard, searching the faces in the audience for my father.  My mother sat with the twins in the third row, her coat on the back of the seat beside her.  I was, of course, the valedictorian.  After the principal, Mother Mary Alice, gave her speech, it was my turn.  The seat next to my mother was still empty.  Swinging between rage and sinking disappointment, I managed to say the words I had memorized.  For me, the day had gone as gray as cardboard, and as flat.  At the end, I thanked the faculty and my parents for their support.

            After the diplomas were handed out, we took a cab back to our apartment.  Father had insisted on throwing a party for me. 

            “After all, you are the first person in my family to go on to university.”

            Some of my friends stopped by.  No one stayed long because they had celebrations of their own at home. 

            My best friend, Bridget, asked, “Where is your father?”

            “Junior got in trouble.”

            “Again?”  she rolled her eyes.  “What a jerk.  What’d he do this time?”

            “I don’t know.”  Tears threatened. I refused to cry until later, when I retreated to my room after most of the guests had left.  All those who remained were part of my parents’ inner circle, along with Cousin Alberto.  I heard my father come in.  He knocked on my door.  I pretended to be asleep.

            In the fall I began Columbia University.  Junior was sent to the New York Military Academy. 

“If the nuns can’t straighten him out, maybe the military can,” said Father.

            Somehow Junior lasted for all four years.  It was probably my father’s generosity that kept him enrolled that long.  There’s a Salerno Gym and a Salerno Science Complex on the campus.  Junior’s grades were barely passing, but they were high enough to get him into the Army as soon as he graduated.  He died in Vietnam, by stepping on a land mine.

The Manor House: Chapter 7

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Chapter 7: Jamaica Inn

            With the windows rolled down to let in a breeze–rental cars in England don’t have air conditioning–Teresa carefully drives between hedgerows until she comes to a signpost.  She loves these posts.  Each signboard points out its singular direction with such assurance: Bideford–Witheridge–Lynmouth.  Teresa checks her map and follows the arrow south toward Bideford.  At Trefarnon in Cornwall, the road to Bodmin Moor rises up from the low coastline.  The car tops a hill and there is the moor.  It is so perfectly bleak, like a brooding brown and green nubby carpet stretching out under the late afternoon sky.  Cirrus clouds make thin shapes that reform like amoebae casting indigo shadows below. 

         Only one road, the one Teresa is following, crosses the moor.  There are no more houses, no more stone walls dividing pastures, no more sheep.  Teresa drives on, trying to remember the plot of Daphne du Maurier’s novel.  She read Jamaica Inn so long ago that all she can recall is the presence of smugglers and the main character suffering a terrifying isolation.  And then she goes over another hill and the Inn is there.  Although the gray stone building is surrounded by a large car park with a scattering of cars and two tour buses, the essence of the place is sinister, more brooding than the moor.  It is stark.  The garden patio is less garden than brick, offering only a few frightened, wind-twisted bushes. 

         Teresa soon has her fill of the place.  The smugglers’ museum is the most interesting part with its maritime paraphernalia and accounts of the most notorious smugglers and wreckers.  Jamaica Inn was the only coaching house between Bodmin and Trefarnon on the coast.  Smugglers brought their barrels of brandy and boxes of tea here to be distributed all across England.  The constabulary, it seems, were often on the take, and punishment for possessing stolen goods was infrequent.  The Inn has its own ghost story as well, about a man who was murdered in the bar.  Photos of ghostly apparitions taken by guests at the Inn are displayed.

         Teresa skims through Daphne du Maurier’s exhibit.  She buys a paperback copy of Jamaica Inn.  It is a relief to get back in the car and drive away.  The place felt thick and heavy to her, as if the air were full of the angular remains of harsh, drunken, bellicose voices.  Once she is out on the moor again, she pulls off the road and stops in a lay-by.  Standing beside the car, she notices a ragged path that leads over the moor.  She follows it.  The heather, in small clumps, has a few purple-pink bells still blooming.  She picks a sprig, sniffs it, and pockets it.  She’ll press it between the pages of Jamaica Inn.  The sun comes down in shafts of light; the air is sweet.

         “Whew!”  She takes in deep breaths all the way to her navel, stretches her arms and feels the weight of the Inn leave her chest.

         As there is not a soul in sight, Teresa starts to run as fast as her sixty-three -year-old legs will move.  She sprints out across the moor until she has to stop because of a stitch in her side.  Then she flops down on her back in the scratchy, fading heather.  When was the last time she lay like this, and looked straight up at the sky?  She can’t remember. 

         Soon the rocks poking into her back force Teresa on to her feet.  She walks back to the car, thinking about how she used to race her brother, Junior, when their father took them to Central Park.  She was older, taller, and therefore faster until Junior passed her up at age fourteen.  No matter how many times Teresa beat her brother in a race, her father would say, “Good, good, Junior!  You run like Man o’ War, like a champion!”

         And Teresa would stand panting, and feel hot tears burn, and swallow the words that pushed from her mouth. “But I won, Father!  I won!”