The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

  ‘But this is more than mere tiredness, surely? Why won’t you see that?’

  ‘I see what’s in front of me,’ I said. ‘Then I make sensible deductions. That’s what doctors do.’

  She gave a cry that was part frustration, part a sort of disgust; but the cry seemed to use up the last of her strength. She covered her eyes, sat still and stiff for a second, and then her shoulders sank.

  ‘I just don’t know,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it seems clear. Other times, it’s just—too much. It’s all too much.’

  I drew her towards me, to kiss and smooth her head. Then I spoke to her, quietly and calmly.

  ‘My darling, I’m so sorry. This is hard, I know. But it won’t help anyone, your mother least of all, if we avoid the obvious … Things have clearly become too difficult for her. There’s nothing odd or supernatural about that. I think she’s been trying to retreat to an era, that’s all, when her life was easier. How many times has she spoken wistfully about the past? She must have made your sister into a sort of figure for everything she’s lost. I think her mind, with rest, will clear. Truly I do. I think it would help her, too, if the estate could get back on its feet.’ I paused. ‘If we were to marry—’

  She moved away. ‘I can’t think of marrying, with my mother like this!’

  ‘Surely it would reassure her, to see things settled? To see you settled?’

  ‘No. No, it wouldn’t be right.’

  I struggled for a second with a frustration of my own; then spoke measuredly again.

  ‘Very well. But your mother’s going to need careful nursing now. She is going to need all our help. She doesn’t need to be frightened or alarmed with any sort of fancy. You understand me? Caroline?’

  After a slight hesitation, she closed her eyes and gave me a nod. But after that we sat in silence. She folded her arms and moved forward in her chair, gazing into the fire again as if brooding over the flames.

  I stayed with her as long as I could, but at last had to leave for the hospital. I told her to rest. I promised to return first thing in the morning, and meanwhile she was to call me if her mother showed any signs of upset or agitation. Then I went softly back down to the kitchen to say the same thing to Betty and Mrs Bazeley—adding that I wanted them to keep an eye on Caroline herself, who I thought was ‘feeling the strain a little’.

  And before I left, I looked in on Mrs Ayres. She was sleeping heavily, with her poor bandaged arms flung out, her long hair tangled on her pillow. She began to stir and murmur as I stood beside her bed, but I laid my hand across her forehead, and stroked her pale, anxious face; and soon she was still.

  ELEVEN

  I didn’t know what to expect when I returned to Hundreds next morning. Life at the house had reached a point where it seemed to me that, in my absence, absolutely anything might happen. But when I stepped into the hall at around eight o’clock I found Caroline coming downstairs to greet me, looking tired, but with reassuring touches of life and colour in her cheeks. She told me that they had all passed an uneventful night. Her mother had slept deeply, and since waking had been quite calm.

  ‘Thank God!’ I said. ‘And how does she seem? There’s no confusion? ’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Has she spoken about what happened?’

  She hesitated, then turned and began to head back upstairs.

  ‘Come and talk to her yourself.’

  So I followed her up.

  The room, I was pleased to see, was light, with its curtains drawn wide, and Mrs Ayres, though still in her night-clothes, was out of her bed, sitting by the fire, her hair tied back in a loose plait. She looked apprehensively at the opening door as we went in, but the alarm passed from her face when she saw Caroline and me. Her gaze met mine, and she blinked, and coloured, as if in simple embarrassment.

  I said, ‘Well, Mrs Ayres! I came early, thinking you might need me. I see I’m hardly needed at all.’ I crossed to her, pulling over the padded stool from beneath her dressing table so that I could sit at her side and examine her. I said quietly, ‘How are you feeling?’

  Close to, I could see that her eyes were dark and still glassy from the sedative I’d given her the day before, and her pose was a rather weak one. But her voice, though low, was clear and steady. She put down her head and said, ‘I feel like a perfect fool.’

  ‘Now don’t be silly,’ I answered, smiling. ‘How did you sleep?’

  ‘So deeply, I—I don’t really remember. That’s thanks to your medicine, I suppose.’

  ‘No bad dreams?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Good. Now, first things first.’ I gently took her hands in mine. ‘May I look at your dressings?’

  She turned her face from me, but meekly extended her arms. She had pulled down her cuffs to cover the bandages, and when I put them back I saw that the dressings were stained and ought to be changed. I went around the landing to the bathroom, and brought back a bowl of warm water; even with the water, however, the business of easing free the lint from the wounds was not very pleasant. Caroline stood to one side, looking on silently as I worked. Mrs Ayres herself bore the operation without a murmur, only catching her breath now and then as the bandage tugged.

  The cuts, on the whole, were closing well. I carefully applied new dressings. Caroline moved forward to take away the bowl of tinted water and to roll up the soiled bandages, and while she was doing that I gently took her mother’s pulse and blood-pressure, then listened at her chest. Her breaths were mildly laboured, but her heartbeat, I was pleased to find, was quick and very firm.

  I closed the lapels of her dressing-gown and put my instruments away. Gently taking hold of her hands again, I said, ‘I think you’re doing very nicely. I’m relieved to see it. You gave the house quite a scare yesterday.’

  She drew away her fingers. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it. Please.’

  ‘You had a very serious fright, Mrs Ayres.’

  ‘I behaved like a foolish old woman, that’s all!’ Her voice, for the first time, lost some of its steadiness. She closed her eyes, then tried to smile. ‘I’m afraid my mind ran away with itself. This house breeds fancies; such silly thoughts. We’re too isolated out here. My husband always used to say that this Hall was the loneliest house in Warwickshire. Didn’t your father used to say that, Caroline?’

  Caroline was still tidying away the bandages. She said quietly, without looking up, ‘He did.’

  I turned from her back to her mother. ‘Well, the house, in its present condition, is certainly partly to blame. But when I saw you yesterday, you said some very startling things.’

  ‘I said a lot of nonsense! I’m ashamed to remember it. What Betty and Mrs Bazeley must think, I simply can’t imagine … Oh, please don’t let’s talk about it, Doctor.’

  I said carefully, ‘It seems a serious matter to ignore.’

  ‘We haven’t ignored it. You’ve given me medicine. Caroline’s been looking after me. I—I’m quite well now.’

  ‘You haven’t felt anxious? Afraid?’

  ‘Afraid?’ She laughed. ‘Good heavens, of what?’

  ‘Well, yesterday you seemed very afraid. You spoke of Susan—’

  She moved in her chair. ‘I told you, I spoke a lot of nonsense! I’d had—I’d had too much on my mind. I’d been spending too much time alone. I realise that now. I shall sit more with Caroline in future. In the evenings, and so on. Please don’t nag at me. Please don’t.’

  She put her bandaged hand over mine, her eyes looking dark and large and still rather glassy in her drawn face. But her voice had levelled again, and her tone seemed very sincere. There was no trace of the staring, babbling woman who had greeted me yesterday.

  I said at last, ‘Very well. But I’d like you to rest now. I think you ought to go back to bed. I shall give Caroline a prescription for you—just a mild sedative, that’s all. I want you sleeping eight dreamless hours a night, until your strength returns. How does that sound?’

&nb
sp; ‘As though I’m an invalid,’ she answered, a hint of playfulness entering her tone.

  ‘Well, I’m the doctor here. You must allow me to decide who the invalids are.’

  She rose, grumbling slightly, but allowed me to help her back to bed. I gave her another Veronal—a lower dose, this time—and Caroline and I sat beside her until, sighing and murmuring, she slept. When we were sure she was slumbering properly, we slipped from the room.

  We stood on the landing. I looked at the shut door, shaking my head.

  ‘She’s so much better! It’s incredible. Has she been like that all morning?’

  ‘She’s been just like that,’ Caroline answered, not quite meeting my gaze.

  ‘She seems almost her old self.’

  ‘You think so?’

  I looked at her. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Mother’s very good, you know, at hiding her real feelings. All that generation are; especially the women.’

  ‘Well, she seemed very much better than I expected to find her. If we can just keep her quiet, now.’

  She gave me a glance. ‘Quiet? You really think we can do that, here?’

  The question struck me as a strange one, given that we were standing, talking in murmurs, at the centre of that hushed house. But before I could answer, she had moved away from me. She said, ‘Come downstairs for a moment, will you? To the library? I want to show you something.’

  I followed her uncertainly down to the hall. She opened the library door, then stood aside for me to go on in ahead of her.

  The room smelt mustier than ever after all the winter rains. The shelves were still draped with sheets, still looking faintly ghostly in the dimness. But she or Betty had opened up the single working window-shutter, and an ashy fire was smoking itself out in the grate. Two lamps were arranged beside an armchair. I looked at them in some surprise.

  ‘You’ve been sitting in here?’

  ‘I’ve been reading,’ she said, ‘while Mother’s been asleep. I spoke to Betty yesterday, you see, after you left. And she set me thinking.’

  She took a step back out into the hall, and called Betty’s name. She must have put the girl to wait somewhere, for she called quite softly, but Betty appeared almost at once. She followed Caroline over the threshold, then caught sight of me in the gloom, and hesitated. Caroline said, ‘Come right inside, and close the door behind you, please.’

  The girl came forward, bowing her head.

  ‘Now,’ said Caroline. She had put her hands together, and was working the fingers of one over the knuckles of the other, as if absently trying to smooth out the papery roughness of her own skin. ‘I want you to tell Dr Faraday what you told me yesterday.’

  Betty hesitated again, then mumbled, ‘I don’t like to, miss.’

  ‘Come on, don’t be silly. No one’s cross with you. What did you come and tell me, yesterday afternoon, after the doctor had gone home?’

  ‘Please, miss,’ she said, with a glance at me, ‘I told you this house’s got summat bad in it.’

  I must have made some sound or gesture of dismay. Betty lifted her head, and stuck out her chin. ‘It does, too! And I knowed that, months ago! And I told Doctor, and he said I were only being daft. But I wan’t being daft! I knowed there was summat! I felt ’m!’

  Caroline was watching me. I looked over, and met her gaze, and said stiffly, ‘It’s perfectly true that I asked Betty not to mention this.’

  ‘Tell Dr Faraday what you felt, exactly,’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard.

  ‘I just felt ’m,’ Betty said, more feebly, ‘in the house. He’s like a—a wicked servant.’

  ‘A wicked servant!’ I said.

  She stamped her foot. ‘He is! He used to move things about, up here; he never did nothing downstairs. But he used to push things over, and make stuff mucky—as though he touched it, with dirty hands. I nearly said summat, after that fire. But Mrs Bazeley said I oughtn’t to, because Mr Roderick was to blame for that. But then all them queer things happened with Mrs Ayres—all them pops and flappings—and then I did say summat. I said summat to madam herself.’

  Now I began to understand. I folded my arms. ‘I see. Well, that explains a great deal. And what did Mrs Ayres say?’

  ‘She said she knowed all about it. She said it was a ghost! She said she liked it! She said it was hers and my secret, and I wasn’t to say. And I didn’t say another word after that, not even to Mrs Bazeley. And I thought that must be all right, because Mrs Ayres seemed so happy. But now the ghost’s turned wicked again, hasn’t he? And I wish I had spoken! For then madam wouldn’t have got hurt. And I’m sorry! But it in’t my fault!’

  She began to cry, putting up her hands to cover her face, her shoulders heaving. Caroline went across to her and said, ‘All right, Betty. No one’s blaming you for anything. You were very good and sensible yesterday, when the rest of us were so shaken. Wipe your eyes.’

  Eventually the girl calmed down, and Caroline sent her back to the basement. She went meekly, but with a baleful look at me; and when she had gone I stood for a moment with my eyes on the shut door, very conscious of the silence and of Caroline’s watchful gaze.

  Turning at last, I said, ‘She mentioned something to me, the morning I destroyed Gyp. You were all so unhappy, I didn’t want to risk upsetting you further. When all that business started with Rod, I thought some of it might have come from her, that she might have put the idea into his head. She swore she hadn’t.’

  ‘I don’t think she had,’ said Caroline.

  She had crossed to the armchair and now, from the table beside it, picked up two hefty books. She held them against her chest, and drew in her breath; and when she spoke again, it was with a quiet sort of dignity.

  She said, ‘I don’t care that you didn’t mention this to me before. I don’t care that I had to hear it from Betty rather than from you. I know what you think about what’s been happening in this house. But I want you to listen to me—just for a little while. You owe me that, I think?’

  I took a step towards her, but her pose and manner were forbidding. I stopped, and said cautiously, ‘All right.’

  She drew another deep breath, and went on.

  ‘After Betty spoke to me yesterday, I began to think things over. I suddenly remembered some books of my father’s. I remembered the titles, and came looking for them last night. I half thought they might have been given away … But anyway, I found them.’

  With a puzzling diffidence, she handed the two heavy books to me. I don’t know what I expected them to be. From the look of them I thought they might be medical textbooks. Then I saw the titles: Phantasms of the Living, and The Night Side of Nature.

  ‘Caroline,’ I said, letting the books sink at my sides, ‘I can’t believe that these will help us.’

  She saw that I didn’t mean to open them, and took them back, and opened one herself. She did it fumblingly, as if not quite in command of her own movements; I looked again at the colour in her cheeks, and realised that what I had been taking for a blush of health was actually a sort of agitation. She found a page that she had marked with a slip of paper, and began to read aloud.

  ‘ “ On the first day,” ’ she read, ‘ “ the family were startled all at once by a mysterious movement among the things in the sitting-rooms and kitchen, and other parts of the house. At one time, without any visible agency, one of the jugs came off the hook over the dresser, and was broken; then followed another, and next day another. A china teapot, with the tea just made in it, and placed on the mantelpiece, whisked off on to the floor.” ’

  She looked up at me, shyly but with a trace of defiance. Her colour was deeper than ever now. She said, ‘That was in London, in the eighteen hundreds.’ She turned a few pages, to another slip. ‘This is in Edinburgh, in eighteen thirty-five. “Do what they would, the thing went on just the same: footsteps of invisible feet, knockings, and scratchings, and rustlings, first on one side, and then on the other, were heard daily an
d nightly.” ’

  ‘Caroline,’ I said.

  She turned more pages—turned one so hastily, it tore. ‘And here. Listen to this: “I meet with numerous extraordinary records of a preternatural ringing of all the bells in a house; sometimes occurring periodically for a considerable time, and continuing after precautions have been taken which precluded the possibility of trick or deception—” ’

  I took the book back from her hands. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Let me look at it.’

  I turned to the title page. The list of headings struck me, and, with a touch of distaste, I read them aloud. ‘“ The Dweller in the Temple”. “Double Dreaming and Trance”. “Troubled Spirits”. “Haunted Houses” . ’ Again, I let the book sink. ‘Didn’t we discuss this yesterday? Do you really think your mother will recover if you encourage her in thinking that this house has a ghost in it?’

  ‘But I don’t think that,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t think that at all. I know it’s what Mother believes; I know it’s what Betty thinks, too. But these things the book talks about, they’re not ghosts. If anything, they’re … poltergeists.’

  ‘Poltergeists!’ I said. ‘God! Why not vampires, or werewolves?’

  She shook her head, frustrated. ‘A year ago I might have said the same. But it’s just a word, isn’t it? A word for something we don’t understand, some sort of energy, or collection of energies. Or something inside us. I don’t know. These writers here: Gurney and Myers.’ She opened the other book. ‘They talk about “phantasms”. They’re not ghosts. They’re parts of a person.’

  ‘Parts of a person?’

  ‘Unconscious parts, so strong or so troubled they can take on a life of their own.’ She showed me a page. ‘Look. Here’s a man in England, anxious, wanting to speak to his friend—appearing to the woman and her companion, at exactly that moment, in an hotel room in Cairo! Appearing as his own ghost! Here’s a woman, at night, hearing a fluttering bird—just like Mother! Then she sees her husband, who’s in America, standing there before her; later she finds out he’s dead! The book says, with some sorts of people, when they’re unhappy or troubled, or they want something badly—Sometimes they don’t even know it’s happening. Something … breaks away from them. And what I can’t stop thinking is—I keep thinking back to those telephone calls. Suppose it’s Roddie, all of it?’