by Susan Hill
The evening’s conversation had disturbed me profoundly and I wanted to retreat into the cocoon of my illness, and of being protected and sheltered here in this house, for I was afraid now of what I would face when I ventured out of it. The description of the countryside by Kittiscar had awakened memories, and perhaps if I had delved more thoroughly into them I might have teased them to the surface, but instead I turned away from them deliberately, for I knew the frustration of trying to bring them to my consciousness. They would swirl and drift about, I would half-glimpse them, only to lose them again, as I had lost my own reflection through the mist in the mirror at Alton.
I had heard something, but not enough. Well, I would let it alone, I would set myself to the task in hand, write about the past I was sure of, the places I could vividly recall, and let the other go.
Nevertheless, the following morning, I took down the Atlas of Great Britain rather than of some other, far country, set it before me on the library table, and traced the pale brown spine of hills that ran north, following the names of Thwaites and Becks, Garths and Tarns, across to the most northerly hills. And then, veering a little west, I found those places I had heard of the previous night. Ashlaby. Bleet. Mucklerby. Raw Mucklerby. Rook’s Crag. Kittiscar. And stared at them until the letters danced together on the page before my eyes.
Two days later, I received a note.
My dear Monmouth,
By chance, I have had to make contact with Mortensen, my shooting companion on the trip to the north last year, and I mentioned to him your possible connection with the area. He knows it a little better than I and he tells me that Kittiscar Hall is lived in by a woman. She is elderly and alone apart from the usual house staff. Her name is Miss Monmouth. Though he knows nothing more and has not been to the house, or ever seen her to his knowledge, I felt certain, in view of her name and of what you told me, that this information would be of some interest to you.
Sincerely
Crawford Maythorn
Now, I thought, it is pursuing me. It is I who have tried to turn my back and am fleeing. I crushed the letter up in my hand, and threw it into the fire.
‘You are troubled about something,’ Lady Quincebridge said. We were in her own small sitting room on the first floor of the house. Tea was over, the empty cups and plates beside us. The curtains were drawn. ‘You have been so much more settled and easy, your work has begun to absorb you, and you have gradually extended your walks so that I have had high hopes of your complete recovery very soon.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is this business about Kittiscar. If I had known what Maythorn was to say, how the whole subject would arise …’
‘Yet only a week ago I was the one desperate – hungry – for any crumb of information. I have longed to know my past – my history – if only to take my mind off all thoughts of Conrad Vane and his devilries. I have the Prayer Book beside me on the bedside chest. I look at it every night before sleep. Yet now I have something real within my grasp …’
‘You are afraid?’
‘Is it that? But why? What have I to fear?’
‘You will not know unless …’
‘Unless I go there. Discover for myself. You are right, of course.’
I bent forwards to stroke the cat, Missy, who sat on the rug, squinting into the fire.
‘The truth is,’ I said miserably, ‘I have become comfortable here, and perhaps I have taken advantage of your kindness. I came for Christmas, a day or two at most. I have been here nigh on a month.’
‘Because you needed us. You were friendless, homeless, and without roots in this country which was new and strange to you. And then you were ill. How could we have sent you away in such a state?’ She smiled. ‘Besides you have been good company to two old sticks. We rattle about here, we are set in our own ways, and little comforts, but at the very least we can share them when it pleases us.’
‘Nevertheless …’
‘Wait a little longer – until the next turn of the year, when there is a sign of spring. It will not be long. But you would have a hard journey and a cold time of it so far north at the back end of January. Go to London, if you are restless now, and visit us again for a few days before you set off. You will be welcome here at any time. Wait a few weeks yet.’
I agreed thankfully, and also said that I would stay at Pyre a few more days, until my work was well under way, and I felt entirely well – for I still tired wretchedly at the end of a walk and fell asleep in my chair, if I was not careful, after dinner.
We played a game of piquet in a pleasantly quarrelsome way then, until the car brought Sir Lionel home from the railway station, and his day in London.
When I went to my desk in the library the following morning, I intended to add several more pages to my African journal. I had made a good beginning, I thought, the memories had come flooding back, and it was a great pleasure and satisfaction to me to be able to recall my Guardian, our neighbours, the servants I had come to know so well, the places in which I had spent my boyhood, and which I had loved.
But, when I set pen to paper, it was not of outdoor days in Northern Kenya that I began to write. As though I were taken over by a force quite outside myself, I began a letter.
Dear Miss Monmouth,
My name, as you will see below, is your name. I have in my possession a Prayer Book given to me as a child, and inscribed, as from Kittiscar Hall. Whether we are related, I do not know, but it seems most likely. I have lately returned from many years, since childhood, spent abroad, at first in the care of a guardian and after his death, some twenty years ago, alone. I am now returned to England, which I left at the age of five, and at present with friends, where any communication would reach me. My London lodgings are at Number 7, Prickett’s Green, Chelsea, S.W.
I intend to make the journey north to Kittiscar in the early spring. What you know of me, if anything at all, I would very much wish to hear, and to have information about any other members of the family, living and dead.
Sincerely
James Monmouth
Having written the letter, I put the subject from my mind and turned back to Africa.
The weather changed, as January went out; it became mild again with fitful sunshine. A couple of days after I had written the letter to Miss Monmouth of Kittiscar, I took the dog Fenny and set off from the house, in the early afternoon. We walked at leisure between the graceful trees of the park, seeing the small deer ahead in the near distance, but they grazed on safely, unperturbed by the amiable old dog. I had begun to make my plans to return to London after the coming weekend. I was feeling more or less fit now, apart from tiredness at the end of each day, and needed to find a somewhat more extensive library of books about my subject. I also thought that I might visit Theodore Beamish’s curious little shop again and dig about for some rare items there.
We came down the slope and the lake lay before us, its gunmetal surface still and smooth, reflecting the winter sun. All around me, the banks were white with clumps of snowdrops, heads bent upon their delicate stems, and pale gold aconites nestled beneath the trees. I had come to identify and enjoy these simple English flowers, they moved me, and pleased my eye more than anything vivid and exotic had ever done, and standing here now, as Fenny snuffled among the mulch and fallen twigs, after some old scent, I resolved that I would one day make a garden, and that it would be full of these delightful half-wild flowers, and of daffodils, of which I had heard so much from Lady Quincebridge.
‘You must be sure to return for a day or so at the beginning of March,’ she had said, ‘the daffodils stretch right across the park and sweep down to the lake – Pyre is quite famous for them.’
But, for the moment, the snowdrops were enough for me, and I rested my back against one of the beeches, to drink in the sight of them and try to imprint it upon my memory.
Then I saw him. He had come a little way out from between the trees on the far side of the lake, and was standing there, apparently looking d
own at the water. The boy. His head was bare, he wore the same torn, white shirt, and grey trousers. His face was as pale as ever, deathly pale. I could see it quite clearly. He did not move away.
My heart was bursting within my chest. This was no ghost, this was a real, living boy; if I went to him now I would be able to touch him, speak to him, question him, there was nothing shadowy or insubstantial about him. So he had followed me here to Pyre, found me out in some way.
And then he looked up, deliberately, knowing full well that I was there, and we were face to face across the expanse of the lake. His expression was as it had been each time I had seen him, distant, anxious, pleading, and it distressed me beyond bearing. I could not move. I was petrified in time and place standing there in the silence. I saw that the dog’s hackles had risen and that she was alert and quivering slightly, staring in the boy’s direction.
The sun slipped behind a cloud and a slight breeze roughened the water and stirred the heads of the snowdrops.
‘Who are you?’ I called out then. ‘Who are you and what do you want of me? Why have you come to me again?’ He stood motionless and silent, staring, staring, and his look sent a chill of fear, and desperation through me. I began to move. ‘Wait,’ I shouted. ‘Wait there.’
But he did not. He turned away slowly, sadly, his head bent. He was further away than I had thought, and I had to get over the rough grass and then halfway round the lake. The path dipped down as it turned. I followed it, half-running, the dog at my heels.
When I came up the rise again, the path ahead, and the places between the trees, the whole of the park that stretched away ahead, were empty. The boy had gone.
The dog Fenny ran round in circles, sniffing first at the ground, then, nose up, into the air, before she came back to me, whimpering a little.
After a while, I turned back, picking up a couple of sticks to throw, encouraging her to follow me. But it was some time before she would give up, and leave the spot beside the lake, where the boy had been. I did not want to speak about what had happened and I did not have to. Apart from the servants, in their own part of the house, Pyre was empty. Lady Quincebridge had gone up to London to join her husband for a dinner and it would be the early hours of the next morning before the car brought them back.
When I got in, I went to the library and tried to concentrate on my work, but the boy remained in my mind; his pale face and ragged form, his air of desperate pleading came before my eyes, so that after only a short time I gave up and sat brooding about him, addressing him in my thoughts. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you asking of me?
But I knew who he was, I had known since I had been to Alton.
A fine rain was veiling the garden, the air was silver-grey, and I stood at the window for a while, looking mournfully out, half-expecting, even half-hoping, to see him again. He did not frighten me, whoever, whatever he was; I was puzzled by him, he challenged my sense of reality, made me question everything I saw around me. Above all, I did not understand how he could be apparently so solid, so there, if he was not. I knew that Viola Quincebridge, with her second sight, was aware of things unseen, of evil, danger and threats, and knew that she would at once pick up my disturbance of mood, and make me talk of the boy. I had felt immune from any strangeness here; until now, Pyre had been a wholly open and untroubled house. Now, it was not.
I went to sleep in my room for a couple of hours that afternoon, my head aching and my limbs heavy, as though some of the illness still hung about me and was dragging me down again. But I awoke somewhat refreshed and, after a quiet dinner, asked for the fire to be made up again in the library, and settled down at my desk.
At first, I worked well, and became deeply immersed in a particular account of a journey I had made with my Guardian into the tribal heartland of Kenya, when I was fourteen or so, a journey which had excited me and first awoken in me the desire to explore, to travel far into remote and primitive places. It had been an extraordinary time, the people friendly, welcoming and yet wholly alien, the country quite beautiful, most especially at dawn which, if I closed my eyes, I could see vividly before me, and hear the cries of the animals from the bush and the calls of the wild birds.
I wrote until my wrist ached and I was forced to set down my pen.
The fire, which never drew well in this chimney, was sluggish, black and smoking unpleasantly again, but the chill I felt around me had to do with more than that. The temperature was low and the air felt clammy, damp and stale. And, with the change of air, I felt something else, a presence in the room. I was being watched with hating, hostile eyes. I sat terrified, as I had been that night in the great library at Alton. Here, there was no gallery, and no possibility of anything being hidden behind the lines of bookcases, here I could look around the room and see everything, books on the walls, table, chairs, oak panelling, stone fireplace, the portrait of some jowly, beady-eyed ancestor with whip and stock that reared above it – the only unattractive picture in the house, and somehow, I had come to think, fittingly placed in this cold, hostile room.
I had not felt fear like this for weeks; indeed, I had never felt it at any time in this house, but now it came, and I was consumed by it, I wanted to cry out, my hands were wet, the hairs bristled upon my neck, my breathing was fast and shallow in my chest. Something was about to happen, something was here, evil and hatred, decay and cruelty were here and directed at me, and I could not escape.
I stood suddenly, knocking over my chair. I was seen. The eyes of the portrait bored into me, but it was not those eyes, hard and cold as they were, from whose stare I recoiled, it was from the gaze of someone I could not see.
‘Who are you?’ I whispered, my own voice choking in my throat. ‘What do you want of me?’
The smoke from the fire belched out softly, I smelled it, sulphurous on the dank air, which now seemed like air not inside any room of a house, but rather the air of some dungeon or vault below ground.
I wanted to stumble out of the door and call for Weston, ask for a fire in the bright cheerfulness of the morning room, engage the man in a conversation just for the sake of his company, but I could neither move nor speak, it was as though I had been gripped by complete paralysis of the will and body, taken by an unseen, unknown presence and force. But it was not silent. I realised that now. For now, I heard the soft, regular sighing breathing; it seemed to be exuded by the walls at the fireplace end of the room. I stared and stared there, as if I could will whatever it was to materialise, but saw nothing, only heard, and was unable even to lift my hands to block out the sound, bound tight by invisible cords, and quite helpless.
I did not faint or cry out, I did nothing except close my eyes and wait, completely possessed by fear and by the presence in the room. In the end, it simply left. I was loosened from my bonds, I stumbled forwards to a chair, and sat, as the chill lifted, and a small spark of brightness flickered in the fire, and the only other sound was the gentle drumming of the rain on the roof and rolling down the gutters outside the window. The breathing simply stopped, the air lightened somehow. Even the old hunting squire was now merely solemn-faced and dull rather than malign of expression.
At last, I looked at my watch. I had set down my pen at a couple of minutes before ten. Hours had passed.
Then, the clock gathered itself, and struck, ten times.
I heard the opening of a door, footsteps, a knock, and Weston came in with the tray of whisky, and the usual plate of sandwiches. It was all I could do not to break down and weep with relief at the sight of him.
That night, I heard the sound of crying again, the same anguished sobbing I had first heard behind the locked door at Alton. It was in the room beyond my own, and it woke me. I lay listening to it without surprise, but rather, with a curious calm, for although it was as real to my ears as any earthly sound could be, I knew that what I heard was unearthly, and that, if I rose and went out to try and trace it, I would fail. I do not think I felt any fear then, only bewilderment and a
determination first to try and understand it – for my common sense told me that it was not possible to lie here and listen to a sobbing that was quite clear, quite definite, and yet which was unreal and came from no living human source. I was being assailed on all sides and in all my senses, seeing, hearing, feeling things around me that were not there – yet there, truly, vividly there to me when they presented themselves.
I could not remain here – or, indeed, anywhere now – or rest, until I had followed my instincts and attended to these things, whatever they were. I had tried to ignore them, going from one place to another, and been pursued, and I was certain now that wherever I fled they would follow me and find me out.
In the past, if I had ever been lost in some remote place, and without any normal means of discovering in which direction I should go, I had quickly learned that it was best to obey my instincts and inner promptings, and to go the way I sensed, though without any external evidence, was right.
Now I was sure that I must act in the same way. For some reason that was quite unclear, I knew I must go to Kittiscar, indeed was being urged to go. I did not know why I felt strongly that what was happening to me, these hauntings, if such they were, had ultimately to do with that place and my past in it, but as I lay in the darkness of my room at Pyre, listening to the sound of the boy’s desperate sobbing, I felt better, stronger and more confident, as well as calmer for having made that decision. And it was not a difficult one, I wanted to go, I had an inner conviction that I would find my own past at Kittiscar, that I had once belonged there, and perhaps did so still.