a French roof, and another two-storey building next to the kitchen on the opposite side. Two signs with identical ornate inscriptions, one above the low gate and the other on the end of the building, claimed that this was “The Old Ferry Inn, Pub and Guest House”.
So there was no mistaking the functions of the inn.
Dusty from the long journey, but still very respectable looking, Ellen came across the manageress in the taproom. She was a still beautiful fifty-year-old, with hard eyes and well-groomed yellow-blonde hair. Her name was Mrs Sinclair, and she received Ellen with a cool friendliness and showed her around.
And Ellen tried not to show how terribly insecure she was feeling.
They looked into the low-ceilinged parlours, with their thick timber walls and old carpets, and passed through the discreetly modernized dining room, then started up the narrow staircase to the upper floor. They were met by the sharp odour of fresh paint.
“We’re not open for the season yet,” explained Mrs Sinclair. “The carpenters are doing renovation work up here. The previous owner did an absolutely sacrilegious job installing the showers and toilets up here on the first floor. Of course, it isn’t easy accommodating modern comforts in a seventeenth-century building, but this is just too much!”
She opened the door to an attic room below the pitched roof, revealing a feast of tastelessness. There was a loud chequered floor, and sickly green wallpaper coated in a kind of thick plastic and carelessly hung with brown glue visible in the joins. A plastic shower curtain, decorated with listless, brooding fish, concealed the shower.
“Ugh!” said Ellen.
“I know! This floor is meant for overnight guests, but I can’t show you the rooms now because it’s practically impossible to get to them. The room that will be yours once it’s finished is at the end of this corridor. Until then you’ll have to stay in the other building, which is only used in an emergency when everything else is occupied, because it’s in a rather poor condition.”
They went back down to the kitchen and over to the oldest part of the inn.
“There is an awful lot of administrative work that needs to be taken care of,” said Mrs Sinclair as they climbed another staircase. “That’s why we asked you to come in plenty of time. The other members of staff will be arriving in ten days, when we open.”
“Do you live here in the inn?” Ellen asked cautiously.
“No, I have my own house in the village.”
“Ah,” said Ellen anxiously and didn’t dare inquire further. Thick floorboards creaked below their feet in a long corridor with deep window recesses.
But it seemed that Mrs Sinclair had registered Ellen’s unease. “You’ll only be alone here for a few days,” she said. “It’ll be fine. You can lock all the doors so you won’t get any unwanted visitors. So here we have the original inn. The previous owner didn’t seem to want to use this part of the house. But I think that was stupid of him. I’ve had some of the rooms here renovated. You can use this one.”
The room had a low ceiling and not a single right angle. The little window with its many curved panes had a view of the street. Ellen noticed that the second sign hung right outside her window.
“This is so cosy,” she whispered, admiring the old-fashioned rose-patterned bedspread and the copper engravings on the wall.
Mrs Sinclair was already back out in the corridor. Ellen had to stoop under the door frame to follow her.
“Numbers four and five are double rooms,” said the manager as she alternately opened and closed the doors. “Eleven and twelve are for families with one child.”
They turned a corner. “And these are single rooms: six, seven and nine. And this is the housekeeping room. The bathrooms are downstairs. We’re not quite fully modernized yet.”
“And what about that door? Where does that lead to?” Ellen asked, pointing to a low, crooked, unpainted door at the end of the hall. “I guess that must be room number eight?”
“That door is never used,” the manager answered curtly as she quickly made her way back to the staircase.
Before Ellen turned the corner, she cast a quick glance at the locked door. Every single inch of the hallway had been thoroughly polished and was freshly painted – but not that door.
Although everything in the house was old, that door looked as if it truly hadn’t been opened for the last hundred years.
It had been daytime then, when the inn was full of the sounds of people working. Carpenters pounded, hammered and dropped boards, and Ellen was thoroughly engrossed in learning all about a receptionist’s duties at an inn. She had never dreamt that these would be so numerous, and Mrs Sinclair had difficulty concealing her annoyance at the fact that Ellen knew so little about office work.
But then evening and dusk rolled around, and the house gradually quietened down. Mrs Sinclair bade her a conciliatory, friendly goodnight and asked Ellen to lock up properly after her.
Which she did. She took a glass of orange juice from the kitchen and plodded dejectedly up the hazardous stairs to her lopsided little room in the oldest part of the inn.
The sound of the river was much more distinct now in its desolate monotony. Deep in the forest she could hear a thrush singing. The sound echoed, lonely, lonely ... if there were any young people in the village you couldn’t hear them. Not a single car or motorcycle, not a single voice could be heard in the quiet, early summer night.
Ellen folded up the rose-patterned bedspread and didn’t feel at all at home in the ancient house. Outside her door there was a little crooked corridor with many closed doors. Below her was an empty floor where the owner of the inn had once lived – and beyond that the kitchen wing extended towards yet another empty building, behind which was a stable where the carriage horses used to be kept.
And now only the 21-year-old Ellen Knutsen from the twentieth century was here. Not that she was scared of the dark or anything like that, but she did feel a certain unease about the whole claustrophobic atmosphere, and all the memories about which the house was silent.
It’s in moments like these that a person really feels just how lonely they are deep down, Ellen thought. An oppressive sense of discouragement came over her. She had experienced many failures during her short life. With an incurable enthusiasm, she had concentrated all her efforts on wild projects, initiating fund-raisers and bazaars for one cause or another that just at that moment had managed to make her heart overflow with compassion. She had protested against injustices and stood up for the weaker members of society, only to discover that you can’t always overlook the opinion of the majority because often the majority is right, and the weak are simply weak and unworthy. She had ...
Oh, she had received many blows! All that contempt, all that scornful laughter, and all the scoldings she had had to endure whenever her eagerness had got the better of her and led her in completely the wrong direction! All the dark hours she had had to face ... Such as right now.
Ellen had so much to give, but she was still too young to see it all in the right proportion and in the right way.
All these thoughts overwhelmed her, along with the sound of the thrush’s lonely song and the eternal rushing of the river.
And the quiet creaking of the house sounded to her like an echo of the troubled years of her childhood.
For there was a dark stain on the family history, that had often plagued Ellen’s thoughts, especially when she was a child. She never associated it with the terrible experience she had once had – the one she had never told anyone about. But this was the time and place to torment one’s soul with such memories.
But luckily Ellen was exhausted, so she didn’t have a chance to lie there for very long, amplifying sounds that weren’t really there and weaving stupid horror stories about the past or the present, before she fell asleep.
The next