Unhallowed Ground by Gillian White Read Free Book Online

sister, and I’m here to collect the cottage key.’
    The woman drew in a breath which exaggerated her thinness. The brown and cream dog-tooth skirt was clipped round her waist with a safety pin, and a pink wool jumper and brown cardboardy cardigan hung off her skeletal frame. At no time did the hostile black eyes unhook themselves from Georgie’s face.
    She felt impelled to go on and explain. ‘The key, the key to Furze Pen Cottage. I am Stephen’s sister.’ And she even began to search in her pockets for the solicitor’s letter, for proof of her identity, for an excuse for this invasion, but she had no need because the woman finally nodded and said, ‘Wait there, I’ll go and get it.’ No smiling introductions. No kind enquiry about her journey. No commiserations over the death of a neighbour who had lived on her doorstep for at least twenty years. No offer of a cup of tea.
    Curses.
    After a minute the woman returned with a sealed brown envelope. The words, ‘Furze Pen’, were printed in bold on the front.
    ‘I have left my car on the road, I’m afraid. I hope it won’t be in anyone’s way. I must have slid the last quarter of a mile…’ She tailed off feebly. Damn her, if she didn’t want to talk, well, Georgie felt the need after her solitary journey, after the last terrifying half-hour. Perhaps she expected some sympathy, some crumb of comfort, but her swarthy-faced neighbour wasn’t having that. Reluctant to leave, no matter how unwelcome she felt, Georgie looked up at the sky and tried again cheerfully. ‘D’you think there’s more snow on the way?’
    ‘Who can say,’ snapped the woman, pulling stiffly at her cardigan again, her face a still, dark tarn of distrust.
    ‘You must be Mrs Buckpit.’ Georgie’s voice was overfriendly, lubricated with goodwill, compensation for the frost between them. If only Helen was with her now. How laughable this would be, how absolutely laughable.
    The face before her narrowed with suspicion, as if knowledge of her name revealed some terrible secret. Half turned away she said sourly, ‘I am, yes.’ And then she snapped, ‘You’ll be wanting milk.’
    Georgie had her own milk, but she said, ‘Oh, that would be nice,’ in another attempt to be neighbourly. ‘Perhaps I could come and fetch it in the morning?’
    ‘No need. You’ll find a pint on your step.’
    ‘I am slightly worried about things like water and electricity. I wondered if there was anyone who might come with me to show me the ropes.’ She stood on one frozen foot, then another.
    ‘Nothing’s been turned off. Everything’s been left as it was.’
    ‘But the solicitor mentioned something about a water pump.’ She was making a nuisance of herself, Mrs Buckpit made that quite clear.
    ‘It’s only a matter of pressing a button. You’ll find it in the shed.’
    By now Georgie’s irritation was rising. There was, after all, a limit, and this woman’s disagreeable manner verged on the downright rude. She caught herself from snapping back, Oh, of course, how silly of me for not knowing that, when the woman softened enough to say, ‘There’s kindling and logs in the woodshed to the right of your back door. The key to that’s in the envelope, all tagged and sorted.’
    She wouldn’t be damn well undermined by those nasty, fluffy-toy, bead-button eyes.
    The electric came down the lane on wires strung to miniature pylons, splintered, temporary, rustic structures like lines of ancient crucifixes. Thank God for the power of man. The telephone wires took another route, staggering drunkenly over the fields. As yet there was no connection to the cottage; they passed it and strode on.
    As she made her unsteady way back to her car, Georgie noticed the other two dwellings which made up the hamlet of Wooton-Coney. Opposite the Buckpits’ farm, on her side of the lane, was a much finer building, a traditional longhouse in the same style as the others, but far less decrepit. It looked as if it