Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996
This edition published by Harper 2017
Copyright © Barbara Erskine 1996 and as follows:
The Toy Soldier (Womans Weekly) 1996; Writer (Chic Magazine) 1996; Aboard the Moonbeam (Womans Story) 1976; Dance Little Lady (Rio) 1981; Distant Voices (Womans Weekly) 1994; A Family Affair (Rio); The Fate of the Phoenix (Womans Weekly) 1993; Flowers for the Teacher (Your Story) 1975; Moment of Truth (Romance Magazine) 1978; The Poet (Judy) 1976; Strangers Choice (Scottish Home & County); A Test of Love (Romance) 1976; To Adam, a Son (Truly Yours) 1975; Watch the Wall, My Darling (Womans Realm) 1989; When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall (Womans World); Choices (Sunday Post) 1996; Island Shadows (Sunday Post) 1996
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008180911
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780007375103
Version: 2017-09-08
Praise
Written with imagination, and spiced with a sharp observation of human foibles. Youll be hard-pressed to find a better book for your bedside table.
Yorkshire Evening Post
Dedication
In Memory of
Uncle Stuart
STUART ERSKINE BIRRELL
18871916
a kindred spirit
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
Preface
Distant Voices
The Drop Out
Moment of Truth
The Duck Shoot Man
Frost
The Fairy Child
Who Done It?
Watch the Wall, My Darling
OBE
The Gift of Music
Island Shadows
A Test of Love
Witchcraft for Today
The Poet
The Toy Soldier
To Adam a Son
Writer
The Fate of the Phoenix
When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall
The Inheritance
Dance Little Lady
Rosemary and Thyme
Flowers for the Teacher
A Family Affair
Networking
Catherines Cat
Strangers Choice
Aboard the Moonbeam
Choices
Twos Company
Keep Reading Barbara Erskine's Novels
Keep Reading Sleepers Castle
About the Author
Also by Barbara Erskine
About the Publisher
Preface
When my first collection of short stories, Encounters, was published in 1990 I did not expect to be asked to compile a second, so I was enormously pleased to find myself writing some new stories, and making a further selection amongst my old ones, for Distant Voices.
I still very much enjoy writing short stories. For me they are the sorbet between the courses of longer novels. They freshen and stimulate the palate. They indulge the writers and the readers whim with a quick glimpse into shadow or sunlight. They intrigue, they titillate, they frighten or they amuse.
As in Encounters those stories that are not new have been chosen from more than two decades of writing and are very varied in theme. To select a few for comment or explanation might help to put the collection in context. Three of the stories, for example, A Test of Love, To Adam a Son and Flowers for the Teacher are unsophisticated and sentimental, written in the early seventies for the so-called true-life market, while others like Witchcraft for Today and When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall depict incidents in an older world where romance has grown a little cynical.
There are of course ghost stories two inspired by my own garden. The core story in Frost came from a sad tale told me about a greenhouse here, thankfully perhaps, now demolished; Rosemary and Thyme is based on an experience which I had myself whilst weeding in my herb garden one morning in early spring.
Catherines Cat has laid to rest (or perhaps not?) a terror which haunted me for a while as a child and made bedtime a torment for many months the suitcase on the wardrobe. The Duck Shoot Man was based on an incident which happened to my mother and my grandmother and myself when we paused on a journey to Edinburgh and spent the night on Lindisfarne.
Dance Little Lady (purely imagination, this one!) was written in the brash eighties; The Toy Soldier (inspired by a toy we found in our cottage) in the more thoughtful nineties, a time of redundancy and re-evaluation.
There are many more, about different times and different places, depicting different moods and both the strange and the mundane.
Three of the stories are much longer than the others. Dance Little Lady, A Family Affair and Watch the Wall are almost novellas two mini thrillers and one a historical romance something to get your teeth into.
Whatever the length and whatever the subject, I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Distant Voices
The lock was stiff and the door swollen. It was several seconds before Jan could force it open and peer at last from the bright sunlight of the porch into the darkness of the house.
As she had climbed out of the car, which was parked on the overgrown gravel of the drive, and looked up at the grey stone façade, she had felt a strange nervousness.
Go and have a look round, my dear. Take as long as you like. David Seymour had pressed the large iron key into her hand the day before, when she had met him for the first time. I want you to get a feel of how it was. He smiled at her, his gentle face dissolving into a network of deep wrinkles, contradicting his initial wariness. Then well talk. Later.
His grandson, Simon, had been with him. Simons an architect. Clever chap. The old man had introduced him fondly. The young man was tall and fair with his grandfathers piercing eyes. Where the older man had the look of a buzzard, hunched, predatory, the younger version was an eagle, right down to the aquiline nose. He had held out his hand to Jan, but his appraisal of her was anything but friendly. Clever he may be, she decided instantly, but also hostile, defensive, and summoned, she suspected, to guard his grandfathers privacy.
Of all the people there on that fatal night fifty years ago, David Seymour had been the hardest to approach. And without him she would get nowhere. He had been, after all, the husband.
She had looked forward so much to this part of her research. Interviewing the people concerned; comparing their memories; putting the pieces of the jigsaw together. But it was harder than she had imagined. Some of the people there had suppressed what had happened for over fifty years. The memories were painful, even after so long. To have an inquisitive journalist raking over the past was the last thing many of them wanted.
She took a step into the darkness of the house and paused. It smelled damp and musty. The floors were dusty and cobwebs hung festooned across the landing window. She peered along the corridor towards the staircase which swept uncarpeted up towards the light and then round and out of sight.
That must have been where she fell.
Behind her the door creaked. A wind was getting up. She could hear the rustling of the leaves on the oaks which grew on either side of the long driveway and she shivered, half wishing now that she had brought someone with her. This is silly. The sound of her voice in the intense silence was an intrusion, but a necessary one. She reached into her soft leather shoulder bag and brought out her micro cassette recorder.
Monday the fourth, she said firmly, holding the machine close to her mouth. I have just arrived at The Laurels. I am standing in the front hall. The house is empty and has obviously been closed for a long time. No one lives here now and there is, as far as I can see, no furniture or anything here.
She moved to a door on her left and put her hand out to push it open. The room inside was empty; pale light filtered through round the edges of the shutters, diffused green by the ivy which clung to the outside wall. The parquet floor was scuffed and criss-crossed with old, long-dried muddy footprints.
This must have been the drawing room. Its large. Beautiful. Ceiling mouldings; candelabra, lovely carved mantelpiece, she murmured into the machine in her hand. She sounded, she thought with sudden wry amusement, like a house agent preparing particulars for the sale of an especially desirable property.