Unhallowed Ground by Gillian White Read Free Book Online Page B

the staircase creaked uneasily, otherwise the house was utterly hushed. With Lola lopping a long behind her, Georgie climbed the threadbare stairs and arrived straight in a bedroom which must have belonged to Stephen. The bed was bare, the mattress rolled up to expose the springs, and a folded candlewick counterpane. She moved it slightly, the single stained pillow was striped and uncased. A simple rug lay beside the bed, and thin unlined curtains hung from tiny windows that looked out back and front. Other than these, and one small chest of drawers, the room was empty. No mirror. No bedside table. No bedside light.
    Oh, did you die here at night, Stephen, in this very room? Night after night, is this where you lay in your drink-induced unconsciousness? Did your bloodshot eyes stare at this very ceiling, or were you too pissed to get this far? Did you lose your fight with gravity and collapse downstairs in the chair by the fire?
    Mutely wallpapered with a garden trellis design, the second bedroom connected to Stephen’s but was more the size of a boxroom. Here there was no furniture at all, no curtains at the tiny windows, not even a shade on the light bulb, but there were myriad paint stains on the floor, vivid stains of the colours an artist might use, not for house decoration. So this is where he must have worked. The smell of oils mingled in here with mouse droppings and old fruit. Georgie touched the paint smears gently with the tip of her boot and thought that the colours she saw on the floor were the nearest she might ever get…
    She pictured him then, her stereotyped fantasy brother, wild-eyed and manic in his smock and hand-sewn boots. A rude and intolerant man with the kind of passionate energy she’d always wished she had possessed, brawling in the local pubs, a bottle to his lips, a man with a flaring temper, not interested in pleasing anyone. Not concerned with the importance of image.
    A wolf of a man who howled at the night, but honest, at one with the world, which he would see as wonderful, miraculous, awesome, astounding, outrageous. Impatient with the small comforts and boring inconsequential with which Georgie seemed to surround herself.
    A few confrontations with the media probably would have amused him. Disgrace would have ricocheted off him.
    She pursed her lips. How pathetic he would think his sister, frightened and furtive, with nowhere to put her passion. She was angry with Stephen. Terribly angry. And morbidly miserable.
    To fight the depression and the feeling of let-down after she’d found the courage to come here, she retraced her steps, passed through the kitchen, unbolted and unlatched the back door, seeking the woodshed with a flickering torch. She had no need, for the light in the small stone building went on and she busied herself with armfuls of kindling, followed by a washing basket of logs. She pressed the button her neighbour had mentioned and heard the whirring water pump. Eureka! She sat before the fire place on the cold thin carpet, breathing heavily as she arranged and lit it. The comfort which came with the instant warmth might be the fire or her satisfaction—perhaps the combination of both.
    What an overwhelming relief.
    Georgie shivered as the warmth returned to her hands and feet, burning. She shared the rug with Lola, who sat beside her and watched the flames, the same glazed look on their faces. She would sort out some food in a minute.
    But what sort of man would chose to spend his life here, hidden away from the world and contented with the most meagre of comforts, without the reassurance of family roots or possessions, not even a radio, TV or books? But his paintings, his easels, his brushes, where were all those? Where was Stephen? Most people leave at least some ghost of themselves behind, and Helen had suggested, quite reasonably, that Georgie might find the brother she’d lost.
    But this was the home of a squatter. Abandoned save for the most basic essentials. As