The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

  ‘Has something happened?’ she asked me gravely. ‘Is it Rod?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. And I proceeded to tell her, as briefly as I could, everything her brother had confessed to me in my dispensary the night before. She listened in growing horror—but also, I thought, with a sort of dawning comprehension, as if my words made a ghastly sense to her, put into her hands the clue to a dark puzzle that up till now had been lying just out of her reach. The only time she interrupted me was when I repeated what Rod had said about the smudge appearing on his ceiling, and then she seized my arm and said, ‘That mark, and the others! We saw them! I knew there was something odd about them. You don’t think—? It couldn’t be—?’

  I realised with surprise that she was almost ready to take her brother’s claims seriously. I said, ‘Anything could have made those marks, Caroline. Rod might have made them himself, simply to back up his own delusion. Or maybe it was the marks appearing in the first place that set the whole thing off in his head.’

  She drew her hand away. ‘Yes, of course … And, you really think that’s how it is? It couldn’t be what you said before? Seizures, and so on?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’d rather there were some physical problem here; it would be easier to treat. But I’m afraid that what we’re dealing with is some kind of, well, mental illness.’

  The words shocked her. She looked frightened for a second, then said, ‘Poor, poor Rod. This is dreadful, isn’t it? What on earth can we do? Do you mean to tell my mother?’

  ‘I did. That’s why I came out here. But seeing her with those photographs—’

  ‘It isn’t just the photographs, you know,’ she said. ‘Mother’s changing. Most days she’s quite her old self. But other days she’s like this, vague and maudlin, thinking too much of the past. She and Rod have started almost quarrelling, about the farm. Apparently there are new debts. He takes it all so personally! Then he shuts himself away. Now I understand why. It’s too horrible … He really said those frightful things, and meant them? You couldn’t have misunderstood?’

  ‘I wish for all our sakes that I had. But no, I’m afraid there was no mistaking him. If he won’t let me treat him, we can only hope that his mind will somehow clear itself. It might do, now that the Baker-Hydes have left the county and all that dreadful business is settled at last; though that’s bad news about the farm. Certainly there’s nothing I can do for him while he remains so fixated on this idea of his that he’s protecting you and your mother.’

  ‘You don’t think, if I were to talk to him—?’

  ‘You might try; though I shouldn’t like you to have to hear what I heard, from his own lips. Perhaps the best thing now is for you simply to keep an eye on him—for us both to watch him, and hope to God he doesn’t grow any worse.’

  ‘And if he does?’ she asked.

  ‘If he does,’ I replied, ‘well, if this were another house, with a more ordinary family in it, I know what I’d do. I’d bring in David Graham, and have Rod forcibly committed to a psychiatric ward.’

  She put a hand across her mouth. ‘It couldn’t come to that, surely?’

  ‘I’m thinking of those injuries of his. It looks to me like he’s punishing himself. He clearly feels guilty, perhaps because of what’s happening now with Hundreds; perhaps even because of what happened to his navigator, back in the war. He might be trying to harm himself, almost unconsciously. On the other hand, he might be seeking our help. He knows what powers I have, as a doctor. He might be hurting himself precisely in the hope that I’ll step in and do something drastic—’

  I stopped. We were standing in the faint light of the unshuttered window, and we had been talking tensely, in murmurs, all this time. Now, from somewhere over my shoulder, as if from the deepest shadows of the room, there came the small sharp creak of metal; we both turned our heads to it, startled. The creak came again: it came, I realised, from the handle of the library door, which was slowly twisting in its socket. Seen through the gloom like that, in our already keyed-up condition, the thing looked almost uncanny. I heard Caroline draw in her breath, and felt her move a little closer to me, as if afraid. As the door was pushed slowly open and the light of the hall revealed Roderick standing there, I think we were both, for a second, relieved. Then we saw the expression on his face, and moved hastily apart.

  We looked, I suppose, about as guilty as we felt. Rod said coldly, ‘I heard your car, Doctor. I’d half expected it.’ And then, to his sister: ‘What’s he been telling you? That I’m touched or cracked or something? I suppose he’s told Mother the same thing.’

  ‘I haven’t said anything to your mother yet,’ I said, before Caroline could answer.

  ‘Well, isn’t that big of you.’ He looked again at his sister. ‘He gave me his word, you know, that he wouldn’t say anything at all. That’s how much a doctor’s word is worth, clearly. A doctor like him, anyway.’

  Caroline ignored that. ‘Roddie,’ she said, ‘we’re worried about you. You aren’t yourself, you know you aren’t. Come into the room, can’t you? We don’t want Mother or Betty to hear us.’

  He kept still for a moment, then moved forward, closed the door, and stood with his back to it. He said flatly, ‘So you think I’m cracked, too.’

  ‘I think you need a rest,’ said Caroline, ‘a break—anything, to get you away from here for a while.’

  ‘Away from here? You’re as bad as him! Why is everyone trying to get me away?’

  ‘We just want to help you. We think you must be ill, and need treatment. Is it true you’ve been … seeing things?’

  He lowered his gaze, impatiently. ‘God, it’s just like after my smash! If I’m to be watched, endlessly watched and fussed and nannied—’

  ‘Just tell me, Rod! Is it true you believe there’s something—something in the house? Something that wants to hurt you?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. But then he lifted his eyes to hers and said quietly, ‘What do you think?’

  And to my surprise, I saw her flinch as if from something in his gaze.

  ‘I—I don’t know what to think. But Rod, I’m frightened for you.’

  ‘Frightened! You ought to be frightened, both of you. But not for me. Not of me, either, if that’s what’s worrying you. Don’t you understand? I’m all that’s holding this place together!’

  I said, ‘I know it seems that way to you, Rod. If you’d just let us help you—’

  ‘This is your idea of helping me, is it? Running straight to my sister, when you promised—’

  ‘This is my idea of helping you, yes. Because I’ve been turning it over in my mind and I don’t think you’re in a position to help yourself.’

  ‘But don’t you see? How can you not see, after all I told you yesterday! It isn’t myself I’m thinking of. God! I’ve never been given any credit for the work I’ve done for this family—not even now, when I’m thrashing myself to death! Perhaps I should pack the whole thing in, close my eyes for once, look the other way. Then we’ll see what happens.’

  He sounded almost sulky now—like a boy trying to argue down a bad school-report. He folded his arms, and hunched his shoulders, and the darkness and the horror of what we were actually talking about, which a moment before had felt so palpable, began somehow to slip away from us. I saw Caroline looking at me, for the first time with doubt in her eyes, and I took a step forward, saying urgently, ‘Rod, you must understand, we’re desperately worried. This can’t go on.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s no point.’

  ‘I think you’re really ill, Rod. We need to work out exactly what the illness is, so that we can cure it.’

  ‘All that’s making me ill is you and your prying! If you’d let me alone, if you’d just let all of us alone—But you two have always been in league against me. All that guff about my leg, saying I was doing the hospital a favour.’

  ‘How can you say that,’ said Caroline, ‘when Dr Faraday was so kind!’
r />   ‘Is he being kind now?’

  ‘Rod, please.’

  ‘I told you, didn’t I? I don’t want to talk about it!’

  He turned, to wrench open the heavy old library door and go out. And as he went he gave the door such a slam, a line of dust came down, like a veil, from a crack in the ceiling, and two of the sheets slid from the bookshelves to land in a musty heap on the floor.

  Caroline and I looked helplessly at each other, then went slowly across to lift the sheets back up.

  ‘What can we do?’ she asked me as we fastened them. ‘If he’s really as bad as you say he is, but won’t let us help him—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I truly don’t know. We can only, as I said before, watch him, and hope to try and regain his trust. Most of that will fall to you, I’m afraid.’

  She nodded, then gazed into my face. And after a little hesitation she said, ‘You are sure? About what he told you? He sounds so—so sane.’

  ‘I know he does. If you’d seen him yesterday you wouldn’t think that. And yet, even then, he spoke so reasonably—I swear, it’s the strangest mix of sanity and delusion I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘And you don’t think—There couldn’t be anything, really—any truth in what he’s saying?’

  Again, I was surprised that she would even consider it. I said, ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. It’s terribly hard, when this sort of thing happens to a person one loves.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  She spoke doubtfully, then put her hands together, working the thumb of one over the knuckles of the other, and I saw her shiver.

  I said, ‘You’re cold.’

  But she shook her head. ‘Not cold—frightened.’

  With an uncertain movement, I put my own hands over hers. At once, her fingers moved gratefully against mine.

  I said, ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m so sorry to burden you with this.’ I glanced around. ‘This house is gloomy, on a day like today! That’s probably part of Rod’s trouble. If only he hadn’t let things slip so far! And now—Damn.’ Frustrated, I’d caught sight of the time. ‘I have to go. You’ll be all right? And you’ll let me know at once, if anything changes?’

  She promised she would. ‘Good girl,’ I said, squeezing her fingers.

  Her hands stayed in mine for another second, then slid away. We headed back to the little parlour.

  ‘What an age you’ve been!’ said Mrs Ayres as we went in. ‘And what on earth was that great crash? Betty and I supposed the roof was falling in!’

  She had the girl at her side: she must have kept her back when she came to take away the tea-tray, or perhaps had rung for her deliberately; she was showing her the spoiled photographs—had laid out half a dozen of them, apparently pictures of Caroline and Roderick as infants—and now began to pick them impatiently back up.

  Caroline said, ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I let a door slam. Now there’s dust, I’m afraid, on the library floor. Betty, you’ll have to see to that.’

  Betty put down her head and gave a curtsey. ‘Yes, miss,’ she said, moving off.

  Not having any time to linger, I said a polite but hasty goodbye—meeting Caroline’s gaze, and trying to will into my expression all the sympathy and support I could—and more or less followed the girl out. I reached the hall, and glanced in through the open library door, and saw her down on her knees with a dustpan and brush, dabbing without enthusiasm at the threadbare carpet. And it was only as I saw the dipping and rising of her slender shoulders that I remembered that queer outburst of hers, on the morning I had destroyed Gyp. It seemed a strange coincidence that her claim that Hundreds had a ‘bad thing’ in it should have found an echo, now, in Roderick’s delusion … I went in and spoke quietly to her, wanting to know if she had said anything that might have put the germ of an idea into his head.

  She swore she had said nothing.

  ‘You told me not to, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘Well, I haven’t said a word!’

  ‘Not even in fun?’

  ‘No!’

  She spoke with great earnestness—but also, I thought, with the faintest touch of relish. I recalled suddenly what a good little actress she was: I looked into her shallow grey eyes, and for the first time I was uncertain whether her gaze was guileless or sly. I said, ‘You’re quite sure, now? You haven’t been saying anything, or doing anything? Just to liven things up? Moving things around? Putting things where they oughtn’t to be?’

  ‘I haven’t done nothing,’ she said, ‘and I haven’t said nothing! I don’t like to think of it, anyhow. It makes me frit if I think about it when I’m downstairs on me own. It in’t my bad thing; that’s what Mrs Bazeley says. If I don’t go bothering him, she says, he won’t come bothering me.’

  And I had to be satisfied with that. She went back to dabbing at the carpet. I stood and watched her for a few moments longer, then left the house.

  I spoke to Caroline several times over the following week or two. She told me that nothing much had changed, that Rod was as secretive as ever but, apart from that, quite rational; and he himself, on my next visit, came to the door of his room when I knocked on it, only to tell me in sober tones that he ‘had nothing to say to me, and simply wanted to be left alone’—then closed the door, with horrible finality, in my face. My interference, in other words, had had exactly the effect I’d feared most. There was no question now of my continuing with the treatment of his leg: I finished my writing up of the case and submitted my paper, and without that reason to call at the house, my visits rather fell away. I found myself missing them, surprisingly badly. I missed the family; I missed Hundreds itself. I worried about poor, burdened Mrs Ayres, and I thought often of Caroline, wondering how on earth she could be coping out there, with things so bad; thinking back to that time in the library and remembering the tired, reluctant way her hand had moved away from mine.

  December arrived, and the weather grew more wintry. There was an outbreak of influenza in the district: the first of the season. Two of my elderly patients died, and several others were badly affected. Graham came down with the illness himself; our locum, Wise, took on some of his workload, but the rest of his rounds were added to mine and I was soon working every spare hour. For the first few days of the month I got no nearer to the Hall than the Hundreds farm, where Makins’s wife and daughter were both lying ill, the milking suffering as a result of it. Makins himself was sour and grumbling, talking of throwing in the whole business. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Roderick Ayres, he told me, for three or four weeks—not since the most recent rent day, when he had come to collect his money. ‘That’s the so-called gentleman farmer for you,’ he said bitterly. ‘When the sun is shining, all’s well and good. The first trace of bad weather and he’s at home with his feet up.’

  He would have gone grumbling on; I didn’t have time to stay and listen. I didn’t have time, either, to call in at the Hall as I would once have done. But what Makins had told me had worried me, and that night I telephoned the house. Mrs Ayres answered, sounding weary. ‘Oh, Dr Faraday,’ she said, ‘how nice it is to hear your voice! We’ve had no visitors in ages. This weather makes everything so hard. The house is so comfortless, just now.’

  ‘But you’re all right?’ I asked. ‘All of you? Caroline? Rod?’

  ‘We’re—fine.’

  ‘I spoke to Makins—’

  The line crackled. ‘You must come and see us!’ she called, through the interference. ‘Will you? Come and dine! We’ll give you a proper old-fashioned dinner. Should you like that?’

  I called back that I should, very much. The line was too bad for us to continue. We fixed on a date, between crackles, for two or three days off.

  The weather, in that short time, seemed only to decline. It was a wet, blowy night, moonless and starless, when I went up to Hundreds again. I don’t know if the damp and the darkness were to blame, or whether, in keeping away for a while, I had forgotten how really shabby and neglected the house had become:
but when I stepped into the hall the cheerlessness of it struck me at once. Some of the bulbs in the wall-lights had blown, and the staircase climbed into shadows, just as it had on the evening of the party; the effect, now, was a strangely lowering one, as if the inclement night itself had found a way in through seams in the brickwork, and had gathered to hang like smoke or must in the very core of the house. It was also piercingly cold. A few ancient radiators were bubbling and ticking away, but their heat was lost as soon as it rose. I went along the marble-floored passage and found the family gathered in the little parlour, their chairs drawn right up to the hearth in their efforts to keep warm, and their outfits eccentric—Caroline with a short cape of balding sealskin over her dress, Mrs Ayres in a stiff silk gown and an emerald necklace and rings, with clashing Spanish and Indian shawls around her shoulders and, on her head, her black mantilla; and Roderick with an ointment-coloured woollen waistcoat underneath his evening jacket, and a pair of fingerless gloves on his hands.

  ‘Forgive us, Doctor,’ said Mrs Ayres, coming forward as I went in. ‘I’m ashamed to think how we must look!’ But she said it lightly, and I could tell from her manner that, in fact, she had no idea how truly outlandish she and her children appeared. That made me uneasy, somehow. I suppose I was seeing them all, as I’d seen the house, as a stranger might.

  I looked closest at Rod; and was pretty dismayed by what I saw. When his mother and sister greeted me he hung back, pointedly. And though he did shake my hand at last, he did it limply, without speaking, and barely raising his eyes to mine, so that I could see he only meant to go through the motions of making me welcome, perhaps for his mother’s sake. But all this I’d expected. There was something else, which troubled me more. His whole manner had changed. Where before he’d carried himself in the tense, hunted way of someone braced against disaster, now he seemed to slouch, as if barely caring whether disaster struck or not. While Mrs Ayres and Caroline and I chatted together, with an attempt at normality, of county matters and local gossip, he sat the whole time in his chair, watching us from under his brows but saying nothing. He rose only once, and that was to go to the drinks table to top up his glass of gin and French. And from the way he handled the bottles, and from the stiffness of the cocktail he mixed, I realised that he must have been drinking steadily for some time.