The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

  I looked into her face but didn’t answer, not quite trusting my voice; and I suppose my saying nothing was as good as murmuring her name or putting out a hand to her. She saw my expression, then glanced over at her mother, and—I don’t know how it happened, but some charge or current at last passed between us, and in it everything was acknowledged, the spring of her hips against mine on the dance-floor, the chill dark intimacy of the car, the expectation, the frustration, the tussle, the kiss … Again I felt almost giddy. She lowered her head, and for a second we stood in silence, uncertain what to do. Then I said, very quietly, ‘I’ve been thinking of you, Caroline. I—’

  ‘Doctor!’ Her mother was calling to me again. She wanted me to take a look at another patch of brickwork. An old lead clamp had worked its way loose, and she was concerned that the wall it supported might be beginning to weaken … The charge of the moment was lost. Caroline had already turned and was making her way over. I joined her at her mother’s side; we gazed gloomily at the bulging bricks and the cracks in the mortar, and I offered up a few more inanities about possible repairs.

  Soon, beginning to feel the cold, Mrs Ayres put her arm through mine again, and let me lead her back indoors, to the little parlour.

  She had spent the past week, she told me, hardly venturing from her room, in an attempt to drive away the last of her bronchitis. Now, as we sat, she held her hands to the fire, rubbing the warmth back into them with obvious relish. She had lost weight recently; the rings moved on her fingers, and she straightened the stones. But, ‘How marvellous it is,’ she said, in a clear voice, ‘to be up and about again! I’d begun to think myself like the poet. Which poet do I mean, Caroline?’

  Caroline was lowering herself on to the sofa. ‘I don’t know, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You know all the poets. The lady poet, frightfully bashful.’

  ‘Elizabeth Barrett?’

  ‘No, not her.’

  ‘Charlotte Mew?’

  ‘Good heavens, how many there were! But I meant the American one, who kept to her room for years and years, sending out little notes and so on.’

  ‘Oh, Emily Dickinson, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, Emily Dickinson. A rather exhausting poet, now I come to think of it. All that breathlessness and skipping about. What’s wrong with nice long lines and a jaunty rhythm? When I was a girl, Dr Faraday, I had a German governess, a Miss Elsner. She was terribly keen on Tennyson …’

  She went on to tell us some tale of her childhood. I’m sorry to say I barely heard it. I had taken the chair across from hers, which meant that Caroline, on the sofa, was to my left, just far enough out of the range of my vision for me to have to make a deliberate movement of my head to catch her eye. The movement grew more strained and unnatural every time I made it; it felt unnatural, too, not to turn to her at all. And though sometimes our gazes would meet and snag, more often her eyes would seem guarded to me, her expression almost dead. ‘Have you been down to the new houses this week?’ I asked her, when Betty had brought our tea, and ‘Have you any plans to visit the farm today?’—thinking I could offer her a lift, and get some time with her on her own. But she answered in a level voice that, No, she had various chores to see to and meant to stay at home now for the rest of the afternoon … What more could I do, with her mother there? Once, when Mrs Ayres turned aside, I looked over more frankly, with a sort of shrug, and a frown, and she looked quickly away, as if flustered. The next moment I watched her casually drawing down a tartan rug from the back of the sofa, and I had a sudden brutal memory of her tightening the blanket around herself in my car, pulling away from me. I heard her voice: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t! And the whole thing seemed hopeless to me.

  At last Mrs Ayres noticed my distraction.

  ‘You’re quiet today, Doctor. Nothing on your mind, I hope?’

  I said apologetically, ‘My day started early, that’s all. And I still have patients to call on, alas. I’m very glad to see you looking so much better. But now’—I made a show of looking at my watch—‘I’m afraid I must go.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity!’

  I got to my feet. Mrs Ayres rang for Betty again and sent her off to fetch my things. As I put on my overcoat, Caroline rose, and I thought with a surge of apprehension and excitement that she planned to walk with me to the front door. But she went only as far as the table, to load the teacups on to the tray. While I stood exchanging a final word with her mother, however, she drew close to me again. Her head was bent, but I saw her glance in a noticing way at the front of my coat. She said quietly, ‘You’re coming apart at the seams, Doctor,’ reaching out and taking hold of my top button, which was dangling by a couple of threads of fraying brown cotton. Caught off guard by the gesture, I jerked back slightly, and the threads unravelled; the button came free in her hand, and we laughed. She ran her thumb over its plaited leather surface, and then, with a touch of self-consciousness, dropped it into my outstretched palm.

  I put the button into my pocket. ‘One of the perils of being a bachelor, I’m afraid,’ I said as I did it.

  And the truth is, I meant absolutely nothing by the comment, it was the sort of thing I had said at Hundreds a thousand times before. But when the implications of the words struck me I felt the blood rush into my face. Caroline and I stood as if frozen; I didn’t trust myself to look at her. It was Mrs Ayres my gaze was drawn to. She was looking at her daughter and me with an expression of mild inquiry—as if we were ‘in’ on some joke that excluded her, but that she naturally assumed we would now make clear. When we said nothing—simply stood there, blushing and awkward—her expression changed. It was like light moving rapidly over a landscape, the inquiry giving way to a sudden blaze of astonished understanding, the astonishment swiftly transforming itself into a tight, self-deprecating smile.

  She turned to the table at her side, putting out her hand as if absently searching for something, then got to her feet.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been rather tiresome today,’ she said, drawing in her shawls.

  I said nervously, ‘Good heavens, you could never be that!’

  She wouldn’t look at me. She glanced at Caroline instead. ‘Why don’t you walk Dr Faraday to his car?’

  Caroline laughed. ‘I think, after all this time, Dr Faraday is capable of finding his own car.’

  ‘Of course I am!’ I said. ‘You mustn’t trouble.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Ayres, ‘it’s I who’ve been the trouble. I see that now. Chattering on … Doctor, do take off your coat and stay longer. You mustn’t think of hurrying away on my account. I have chores to finish upstairs.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ said Caroline. ‘Really. What on earth’s got into you? Dr Faraday has patients to visit.’

  Mrs Ayres was still gathering her things together. She said, as if Caroline hadn’t spoken, ‘I dare say you have lots to discuss, the two of you.’

  ‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘I assure you! Nothing at all.’

  I said, ‘I really must go, you know.’

  ‘Well, Caroline will walk with you.’

  Again Caroline laughed, her voice hardening. ‘No, Caroline won’t! Doctor, I’m sorry. What nonsense this all is! All because of a button. I wish you were handier with your needle. Mother will give me no peace, now … Mother, sit down again. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s quite wrong. You needn’t leave the room. I’m going upstairs myself.’

  ‘Please, don’t do that,’ I said quickly, putting out my hand to her; and the touch of feeling that crept into my voice and pose must have done more than anything to give us away. She had already begun moving purposefully across the room; now she made an almost impatient gesture—shaking her head at me. And in another moment she was gone.

  I watched the closing of the door behind her, then turned back to Mrs Ayres.

  ‘Is it nonsense?’ she asked me.

  I said helplessly, ‘I don’t know.’

  She drew in her breath, and her shoulders sank as she released it. She re
turned to her chair, sitting down heavily, and gesturing for me to return to mine. I perched at the front of it, still in my overcoat, my hat and scarf in my hand. We said nothing for a moment. I could see her thinking it all through. When she did at last speak, her voice had a false brightness to it—like a dull metal, overpolished.

  ‘Naturally,’ she said, ‘I’ve thought of you and Caroline making a match, many times! I think I thought of it the very first time you came here. There’s the difference in ages; but that means nothing to a man, and Caroline’s too sensible a girl to be troubled by those sort of considerations … But you and she seemed good friends merely.’

  ‘We’re still good friends, I hope,’ I said.

  ‘And something more than friends, clearly.’ She glanced at the door, and frowned, perplexed. ‘How secretive she is! She’d have told me nothing of this, you know. And I, her mother!’

  ‘There’s scarcely anything to tell, that’s why.’

  ‘Oh, but this isn’t the sort of thing one does by degrees. One crosses the floor, as it were. I shan’t ask exactly when the floor was crossed, in this case.’

  I shifted about uncomfortably. ‘Very recently, as it happens.’

  ‘Caroline’s of age, of course. And she always did know her own mind. But, with her father dead, and her poor brother so unwell, I suppose I should ask you something. Your intentions, and so on. How Edwardian that sounds! You’ll have no illusions about our finances; that’s a blessing.’

  I shifted again. ‘Look, you know, this is all a little awkward. You’d do better talking to Caroline herself. I can’t speak for her.’

  She laughed, unsmiling. ‘No, I shouldn’t recommend you try.’

  ‘I’d be happier, to be honest, if we could let the subject drop. I really do have to go.’

  She bowed her head. ‘Of course, if you wish.’

  But I sat struggling with my feelings for a few more moments, perturbed at the turn my visit had taken, unhappy that this thing—which still struck me as having come more or less from nowhere—had put such an obvious distance between us. At last, abruptly, I got up. I drew close to her chair, and she tilted back her head to look at me, and I was amazed and alarmed to see that her eyes were wet with tears. The flesh around them seemed to have darkened and slackened, and her hair—for once, without its silk square or mantilla—was, I realised, streaked with grey.

  The artificial brightness of manner had gone, too. She said, with a touch of playful self-pity, ‘Oh, what’s to become of me, Doctor? My world is dwindling to the point of a pin. You won’t abandon me completely, you and Caroline?’

  ‘Abandon you?’ I stepped back, shaking my head, trying to laugh the whole thing off. But my tone sounded as false to my ears as hers had, a few minutes before. I said, ‘This is all absurdly precipitate, you know. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, and no one’s to be abandoned. I can promise you that.’

  And I left her, going rather dazedly along the passage, more unsettled than ever by the turn of events and by the speed with which, in such a short space of time, things seemed to have jolted forward. I don’t think I even thought of going after Caroline. I simply made my way to the front door, putting on my hat and scarf as I went.

  But as I crossed the hall, some sound or movement alerted me: I glanced up the staircase and saw her there, on the first landing, just beyond the turn of the banister. She was lit from above by the dome of glass, her brown hair looking almost fair in the soft, kind light, but her face in shadow.

  I took off my hat again, and went over to the lowest stair. She didn’t come down, so I called softly up to her.

  ‘Caroline! I’m so sorry. I really can’t stay. Talk to your mother, will you? She—she has an idea that we’re about to elope or something.’

  She didn’t answer. I waited, and then added more quietly: ‘We aren’t about to elope, are we?’

  She hooked a hand around one of the balusters and slightly shook her head.

  ‘Two sensible people like us,’ she murmured. ‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’

  Her face being in shadow, her expression was unclear. Her voice was low, but level; I don’t think she meant it playfully. But she must, after all, have been waiting there for me to appear; and it struck me suddenly that she was still waiting—waiting for me to climb the stairs, go up to her, nudge the thing forward, put it well beyond question or doubt. But when I did take a step upwards, it was as though she couldn’t help herself: a look of alarm came into her face—I caught it, even through the shadow—and she took a swift step back.

  So, defeated, I moved down again, to the pink and liver-coloured marble floor. And I said, not warmly, ‘Yes, it seems awfully unlikely, at the moment’—putting on my hat and turning away from her, and letting myself out through the buckled front door.

  I began to miss her almost at once, but the feeling irritated me now, and a sort of stubbornness or tiredness kept me from pursuing her. I spent a few days avoiding the Hall altogether—taking the longer route around the park; wasting fuel in the process. Then, quite unexpectedly, I ran into her and her mother on one of the streets of Leamington. They had driven in to do some shopping. I came upon them too late to pretend I hadn’t seen them, and we stood and chatted, awkwardly, for five or ten minutes. Caroline was wearing that unflattering wool hat of hers, together with a jaundice-coloured scarf I hadn’t seen on her before. She looked plain and sallow and remote, and once the first shock of bumping into her had worn away, I realised unhappily that there was no leaping charge between us, no special sympathy at all. She had clearly spoken to her mother, who made no reference to my last visit; indeed, we behaved, all three of us, as if that visit had never occurred. When they left me I raised my hat to them, as if to any acquaintance on the street. Then I went moodily on to the hospital—and started a dreadful row, I remember, with the most ferocious of the ward sisters.

  Over the next few days I threw myself back into my rounds, not wanting to give myself any time to be idle and brooding. And then a piece of luck came my way. The committee on which I’d been sitting was due to present its findings at a London conference; the man who was meant to give the paper fell ill, and I was invited to take his place. With things with Caroline so muddled, I leapt at the chance; and as the conference was a long one, involving a few days’ stay as an observer on one of the wards of a London hospital, for the first time in several years I took a complete break from my practice. My cases were handed over to Graham and to our locum, Wise. I left Warwickshire for London on the fifth of February, and altogether was away for almost two weeks.

  My absence couldn’t, in practical terms, have had much impact on life at Hundreds, for I was often unable to call in at the Hall for longish spells of time. But I learned later that they missed me there. I suppose they had come to rely on me, and liked feeling that I was on hand, ready to drop in, if I had to, in response to a telephone call. My visits had eased their sense of isolation; now it seemed to rush back upon them, more dismal than before. Looking for distractions, they spent an afternoon in Lidcote with Bill and Helen Desmond, followed by an evening with elderly Miss Dabney. Another day they went into Worcestershire, to visit some old family friends. But that journey took most of their petrol-ration; and then the weather grew wet again, and it became more difficult to get about on the bad country roads. Fearful for her health, Mrs Ayres kept safely indoors. Caroline, however, was made restless by the constant rain: she put on her oilskins and wellingtons and worked hard on the estate. She spent some days with Makins at the farm, helping with the first of the spring sowing. Then she turned her attention to the garden, fixing up the broken fence with Barrett, and doing what she could with the blocked drainpipe. This last task was a dispiriting one: going closer to the problem she could see how very badly the water had seeped. When she had cleared it, she went back into the house, to check for damage in all the rooms on the west side. Her mother went with her; they found minor leaks in two of the rooms, the dining-room and ‘boot-room
’. Then they opened up the saloon.

  They did this rather reluctantly. On the morning following the disastrous party back in October, Mrs Bazeley and Betty had gone in there to try and remove the traces of blood from the carpet and the sofa—working at them for two or three hours apparently, taking away pail after grisly pail of cloudy pink water. After that, with the house so depressed, and with all the anxiety over Rod, no one had had the heart to go back in there, and the saloon had been more or less shut up. Even when Caroline had gone through the Hall in search of items to auction, she had left this room untouched—almost as if, I remember thinking at the time, she’d developed a sort of superstition about disturbing it.

  But now, putting back its creaking shutters, she and her mother cursed themselves for not having looked it over sooner. The room was more damaged than they could have guessed, its decorative ceiling so bloated with water it actually sagged. In other spots rain had simply worked its way through seams in the plaster to fall unchecked on the carpet and furniture below. The harpsichord, fortunately, had escaped the worst of the damage, but the tapestried seat of one of the gilt Regency chairs was quite ruined. Most startling of all, the yellow Chinese wallpaper had tugged its corners from the rusting drawing-pins with which Caroline had fixed them up, and was drooping in ragged strips from the damp plaster behind.

  ‘Well,’ said Caroline, sighing, gazing at the mess, ‘we had our trial by fire. I suppose we should have expected to be tried by water, too …’

  They called for Betty and Mrs Bazeley, and had them build up a blaze in the grate; they started up the generator, brought electric heaters and oil-stoves, and for the rest of that day, and through the whole of the day that followed, they devoted themselves to airing the room. The ceiling they knew they could do nothing for. The crystal cups of the chandelier held pools of cloudy water, and fizzed and crackled alarmingly when they tried its switch, so after that they dared not touch it. The wallpaper was beyond salvage. But the carpet they thought they could rescue, and the pieces of furniture too large to be taken for storage elsewhere they planned to clean, then bag or drape. Caroline herself joined in the work, putting on some ancient drill trousers and tying up her hair with string. Mrs Ayres’s health, however, had taken another slight dip, and she was not quite well enough to do much more than watch unhappily while the room was stripped and diminished.