Calico Road by Anna Jacobs Page A

helping me,’ Phoebe promised fervently.
    The next day Toby got her to show him round the rest of the inn. Used to studying buildings, he could see that it had indeed been added to bit by bit – a room here, a room there – and some of the builders had been more skilful than others.
    As they approached the rear of the building, however, Phoebe stopped talking and began to look faintly apprehensive. Toby had to bend his head to get into the back part, so low were the doorways, and yet once inside he found a huge room with a high ceiling. He stared round in astonishment at the manner of its building. He’d seen nothing like it before and wondered if this was how they’d built all houses in the distant past. There was one large room, with no ceiling but the underneath of the roof with all its beams showing, festooned by years of cobwebs. Several doors led off it to the rear and there was a door leading outside to the right. ‘It seems more like a barn than a house,’ he said, thinking aloud.
    ‘The Curate came to look at it when he first arrived. He said it was very old and had probably been built by monks. It was a barn once, only later had someone turned it into a house and built those rooms on.’ She waved a hand at the rear doors.
    Toby went to examine the uprights, nodding approval. Good wood, well seasoned, and yes, it’d last a long time still, though the plastered walls needed attention and some of the small, old-fashioned bricks were fretting away. The builders had used massive trees as the frame of the building, ones with big branches that curved in the way they needed. They’d cut the trees in half and used each pair to form a rounded V-shape at the short end of the room. Then they’d connected them with crossbeams to give them stability.
    The walls had been filled in by a series of oblongs separated by wooden cross-pieces. The bottom oblongs were filled by bricks, the upper ones plastered, so that the walls looked like an untidy patchwork.
    Toby felt strangely as though someone was watching him, and turned to Phoebe to ask, ‘Can anyone get into this part of the house? It seems very different from the front.’
    She shivered. ‘None of the villagers would even try to get in.’
    ‘Then maybe there’s someone lurking in one of the rooms.’
    She looked at him solemnly. ‘You feel it too, then?’
    ‘Feel what?’
    ‘Folk in the village say it’s haunted an’ I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not right. It fair gives me the shivers an’ I never come here unless I have to. Eh, the times I’ve had a quick check round to make sure there’s no one here as shouldn’t be – and there never is.’ She shuddered. ‘Let’s get back to that warm fire.’
    ‘I’ll join you in a minute.’ He peeped quickly into each of the three rooms at the back. Like the main chamber, they were completely empty. He’d examine this part of the inn properly later and do any necessary repair jobs because it was more important to get the front looking better. If this old part was unsafe, he’d either repair it or demolish it. But it didn’t seem unsafe, just – well, there was no word for it but strange .
    He walked back slowly, unable to believe he owned such a big place, feeling overwhelmed by his good fortune. Why had John Greenhalgh given it to him? It seemed so unlike the man.
    That reminded Toby of the shame of having to ask the lawyer to read the deed of gift to him. He wouldn’t forget his vow to learn to read and write properly, either. Jethro Greenhalgh wasn’t going to get the chance to sneer at him again, and anyhow Toby reckoned he’d need to be able to read easily and cast proper accounts with a business to run. He’d watched Bob write things down all the time and his old employer had always said you didn’t just hope to make money from a business, you had to know where each penny went and whether it was working for you properly. And Bob was a rising man, so who better for Toby to model