(Note this is a long story, a novelette, but it's divided into small parts and there's hopefully enough to entertain along the way. If you liked my stories "Horse and Ruth", "Lemon House" and "Alouette" then this might appeal. BTW all the paintings exist if you want to Google them. Enjoy. BC)
Grunt had never been called by an employment agency before. That was for professional types, surely, not a bloke who'd just spent lockdown bouncing between homeless shelters. Still, the agency were "terribly keen" he visit them 10am that very morning, Tuesday 21st June 2020. They said it was good news.
He turned up at the swanky city offices with his whole head freshly shaved, wearing his Sunday best--black combats and t-shirt. Sure, the clothes were donated, but at least they were clean and almost big enough. A friendly volunteer at his shelter even bought him some shiny new work boots. He felt dead important strolling into the granite lobby for his appointment, at least until the security guard slipped him a tenner.
A round little woman, the agent, took him in a glass elevator to her top floor office and offered him a seat, but when he lowered into the designer chair it creaked so alarmingly he stood up again. He planted himself opposite her desk hunched, as if that would knock a foot off him and make him human sized.
The agent was a jolly type. She constantly laughed, to put him at ease he guessed, but it made her sound super-stressed or like she was taking the piss. He guessed she already knew he was mute, too, because she spoke loud and slow. He wasn't dumb. He just couldn't talk.
"Mr Johns... can I call you Grant?"
Everybody called him Grunt, but he nodded anyway.
"O... K. Well. This is a very unusual situation. An old and highly respected legal firm, Carboys and Carboys, has been hassling us for years, all the employment agencies in the UK, actually, looking for a Grant Johns." She regarded a printout on her desk. "A large man, they say, with a wide range of skills. My wife volunteers at your shelter. When she described you, I thought of Carboys straight away. Do you know someone there?"
He shook his head.
She snorted. "Course not! Well it seems they know you Mr Johns. So let me check, you're an accredited carpenter, plumber and electrician?"
Nod.
"And you're a qualified gardener of some ten years?"
Nod.
"You've worked in security, as a doorman, a bodyguard and as a live-in guardian?"
Nod.
"Will you marry me?"
He shook his head.
The agent blasted a laugh so loud Grunt jumped. She scanned her page. "Oh and you have an A-level too. In Art?"
He did. How did she know that? He braced for the piss-takes.
"Well done you!" She ran her finger along the page. "So. Carboys manage the affairs of a select number of very wealthy individuals and estates. They need you to look after a substantial property they've maintained but kept vacant for over a hundred years, in accordance with the will of the last owner. You'll be paid a subsistence, but can live on the premises. You might call this a dream gig, Mr Johns. Interested?"
He shrugged, then nodded. He even managed a smile. He wasn't fussy. Any old mansion would do.
"It's... Shackam house in Hampstead." She made it sound like the star prize in a game show.
He sagged. Any old mansion but that one.
Typical. Of all the houses in England, they wanted him to look after the one place that gave him nightmares. One day, life would cut him an actual break.
Grunt grew up in a children's home near Hampstead. He used to climb over the wall of that creepy old house and steal apples because none of his mates had the balls. They said it was haunted by "The Red Lady." He thought that was bollocks. One afternoon, to prove his bravery, he sneaked in just to hang out in the garden. He couldn't believe no-one lived there, yet it was kept so neat, as if waiting for its owner to return. He explored the maze, rolled on the lawns, pissed on the topiary, then stalked around the building to see if he could sneak in there too. That's when he caught a violent flash of red at a first floor window. Thrashing hair. An unhinged scream.
The agent didn't clock his disappointment. "The last caretaker quit. He..." She checked her page. "Oh, he ran away. How strange." More chortling. "His loss, eh? Anyway, they said try it for one night, and contact them tomorrow if you want it."
She gave him a set of keys straight out of a museum, and slapped his shoulder like the flank of a horse. "Oh and there's limited running water and no electricity at the property, I'm afraid. But that won't effect a stout soul like you will it? Plenty of open fires--" another horse pat--"and you look no stranger to an axe, eh?"
Grunt frowned.
The agent guffawed.
#
Shackam House was a Georgian pile set in its own walled parkland in a secluded, villagey part of Hampstead. He'd vowed never to return since he saw the Red Lady that day, yet here he stood, facing the formidable old red brick mansion, willing his legs to approach the gate.
He forced himself to look hard at each black window, as if staring down a fight. The huge Georgian panes were empty and alien, like the eyes of a lion at the zoo. No. A lioness. There was something both feminine and monstrous about that façade. Beautiful yet fearsome. Like she dared you to admire her.
His knees wobbled as he screeched open the gate and climbed the portico steps. His fingers trembled as he offered the twisted old key to the lock.
He clattered open the doors, slicing sunlight into the dusty dark of a long, marble hall complete with a formidable grand stair. A dark figure set his heart pounding. His own shadow.
He shook his head, stepped in and closed the door. Then he turned back to the hall, and the Red Lady greeted him.
Or at least her portrait, hung over a hallway fireplace. A young woman with rosebud lips and doe eyes set in a melancholic but ecstatic gaze. He recognised the painting's Pre-Raphaelite style. He'd always had a thing for those winsome women. Their bodies so neat and skin so perfect. He had a Pre-Raphaelite poster on his own wall, when he had his own wall, of a little known painting by John Collier--it depicted Lady Godiva, naked astride her horse.
In fact, he'd dreamt of that woman the night before. She was posing for the painting and he had to take the place of the horse. He dropped to his hands and knees and she sat on his back. He felt ashamed, then excited as she wound her naked hips on him, sighing, patting his shoulder. "Good boy. Good boy" A patch of damp grew on his back, then water rose, up his wrists and knees.
The fireplace portrait was less cheeky. It looked like a Rossetti. And it looked like an original.
They all did. Pictures of the Red Lady hung everywhere. He creaked around the gloomy rooms, throwing open shutters and windows to flush all the shadows and stale air. The last bloke hadn't looked after the place too well, the parquet was grubby and paintwork peeling. Old chicken-shop boxes and empty lager cans littered every surface.
Grunt had brought refuse sacks and collected trash as he went. It was his way of laying his scent in a new place, to tidy it up, and with each bag he stuffed with the mundane shit of ordinary life, ghosts seemed less and less likely.
He tidied the hallway, library, drawing rooms and dining room under the dreamy eye of the Red Lady hung on every wall. In each picture she seemed distracted, even enraptured, by someone just behind him. He stopped to take one in, and became mesmerised. He tumbled into her massive, liquid eyes. Wondered if her lips were parted for a sigh or a kiss. She had the heavy-lidded look of someone for whom love, life even, was always just out of reach. Delighted at what she saw but resigned to never touch it. Hopes waiting to be dashed. He knew that feeling.
Then, upstairs, a girl sobbed. No. More like caught breaths. Whimpers.
He jumped. Listened hard.
Nothing. Maybe squatters? He wanted to call out, announce himself. Damn his dumb mouth. He growled, and stomped loudly up the stairs.
The first floor's dark blue corridor was coated in dust and dimly lit by a stained skylight. On a table set beneath, displayed on its own mount, lay a strange iron poker, it's tip wrought into spirals. A grim kind of artwork. In passing, he clocked it as a potential weapon. Heavy ornaments had saved his skin more than once working as a live-in guardian.
All the rooms were locked, but for one. The doors swung open almost on their own, into a room that was more studio apartment than bedroom. A boudoir, with its own ensuite bathroom, and tables, chairs and chaise set about an imposing fourposter on a raised dais. The bedroom even had a little library nook.
And more Red Ladies. But these weren't the chocolate box, dreamy portraits of the ground floor. The huge room was covered floor to ceiling with nudes. The copper-headed girl lay naked on her front staring at a crowing cockerel on her bedstead, or at a phallic vase. On one, a snake coiled around her hips, on another she lolled on a tiger with a leopard and cheetah lolling on her legs. In another she was ecstatic in the air, with wisps of golden mist about her hips and between her legs. Naked in a peacock chair. Tip-toeing starkers through a forest. Then, in pride of place, a large piece set between two enormous windows. The Red Lady was stood up to her thighs in a placid pool. In this, she was dressed--as a milk maid it seemed--but had tugged up the hem of her skirt to stare glassily at her intimate reflection in the flat water.
Grunt's ears blazed. He focussed on his trash-gathering to distract himself but still felt mugged by angels.
The emerald silk bed had a box of Kleenex on the pillow, and a little nest of scrunched tissues on the floor. No prizes for working out which room the last bloke slept in. Grunt's stomach turned. He threw open a window.
The gardens though, were exactly as he remembered. He could even see the wall he'd climb over as a kid, opposite an avenue of espalier apple trees. A green-scented breeze called him.
#
Eight hours later, he'd pulled up a dead tree and hacked it into firewood. He'd mowed the lawn and filled a shopping bag full of new potatoes. He was about to tackle pruning a shaggy box-hedge arch when he noticed the sweat soaking through his combats. His T-shirt clung to him like he'd swum a length in it. His skin itched, and his arms and back ached. His shadow stretched all the way across the lawn toward the house like it was trying to haul him back inside. What time was it anyway? Being late June, it was probably later than it felt.
He'd save his energy for tomorrow, have a bath and--
Damn. Didn't the agent say there was no water? Or was that electricity?
