“Sorry,” I said meekly.
“Well, Mrs. Grant, what about you now?” He looked at me dubiously.
“What about me?”
“You won’t want to stay up here by yourself,” he said. “Do you have any friends locally that might join you? Or perhaps you could stay with them?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Sergeant,” I said boldly.
“Perhaps not now, Mrs. Grant. But tonight …” He paused and glanced at the WPC. “Constable Slater here could hang on for a couple of hours, I’m sure, till we see how you feel …”
“That’s very kind, but no,” I said. I guessed it was his distrust of me that was making him so conscientiously solicitous, but I was touched all the same.
“I am seeing some friends tonight,” I went on. “They’re taking me to the theatre.”
“The theatre,” he said as though I’d confirmed all his suspicions.
“At Rosehill. I’m sure I can make some arrangements with them.”
“As you wish,” he said, suddenly losing interest. “We’ll keep in touch.”
I watched their car bump out of sight down the lonning, then went inside and made myself a cup of tea.
The play was a revival of the famous dramatization of John Aubrey’s Brief Lives. I’d seen it before in London, but it was well worth a second visit and the audience loved it.
Afterwards we went back to the large modern bungalow near St. Bees where my hosts for the evening, Sheila and Mike Underdown, lived. Sheila, a skinny hectic blonde with buck-teeth that men found very sexy (so she claimed), had shared a flat with me during my early years in London. I had seen Mike develop from a rather gauche young man with a huge appetite for our food to the present smooth property dealer with a huge appetite for his own scotch. He was a partner in a local estate agent’s but his own speciality was finding, buying, renovating and either selling or letting properties as second or holiday homes. High Ghyll had come to me via Mike, so while politically I vaguely disapproved of his activities, personally I had benefited greatly. Until last night, of course.
We talked about the play as Mike poured drinks.
“The one I liked best,” said Sheila, “was the man, Sir William something who got caught short in Cheapside and told his servant, hide my face, for they shall never see my arse again.”
“No, no,” said Mike. “That’s an old story. I bet it existed in Latin and Greek, too, and ancient Egyptian before that. My favourite is that fellow, Captain Carlo Fantom. He sounds a complete original. A Croatian, very quarrelsome and a great ravisher.”
“Yes, that would appeal to you,” said Sheila.
I took my drink from Mike and drank deeply. I had not spoken yet of what had happened at High Ghyll earlier that day. It had proved strangely difficult, don’t ask me why. I’m not usually bothered by considerations of delicacy, particularly among friends. But I hadn’t been able to say anything when we met in the theatre bar and it wasn’t something I felt we could chat about during the interval. I took a deep breath.
“Talking of ravishing,” I said.
I thought I was being self-possessed and objective about the business but half-way through my account I found that I was crying. I did not break down or sob and my narrative was quite uninterrupted, but tears ran steadily down my cheeks and occasionally splashed audibly into my scotch.
I found myself watching their reactions closely. What, I wondered, would I say if it were Sheila doing the telling?
“Good God!” said Mike. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
He sounded faintly put out as though his place in the pecking order of confidences had been usurped. But he topped up my tear-diluted drink, which showed some sense of priorities.
Sheila had gone pale and quiet.
“That’s monstrous,” she said finally. “Monstrous. The bastard should be castrated.”
I realized I had voiced some deep and secret terror of Sheila’s. Men seem to believe that women fantasize (usually with an element of fearful pleasure) about rape all the time, but the research I had done for my articles didn’t throw up much evidence of this. I suppose the fact that I kept a shotgun in my bedroom at High Ghyll might seem to indicate that some thoughts on the subject had crossed my mind. Perhaps so, but never consciously and never as imaginative titillation. Even tonight, only twelve hours or so after it had happened, there had been moments during the play when the nasty memory had gone quite out of my mind. I couldn’t say that I’d found the piece about Carlo Fantom, the Croatian Ravisher, particularly amusing, but yes, Mrs. Lincoln could say that, apart from that, she’d enjoyed the play.
Sheila was angrier than I’ve ever seen her and I found my own equilibrium was quickly regained in my efforts to placate her. My tears dried up as suddenly as they’d started and Sheila led me from the room to repair my face and give me a chance to say anything I might not have said in front of Mike. There wasn’t in fact anything I wanted to say, but I gave her a few grisly details to keep her unhappy, though in reality the whole affair was already strangely distant and I had to draw heavily on my imagination.
They wanted me to stay the night and I might have succumbed if later while Sheila was out of the room Mike had not said to me in his serious voice, “Listen, Cora, someone’s got to say this, I hope you won’t let this experience put you off, I mean, it’s rotten I know but…”
“Like falling off a horse?” I said. “The thing to do is get right back on?”
“Yes. In a way.” He looked at me sideways over his glass. I was, I realized, going to have a lot of men looking at me like that if I wasn’t careful. Suddenly I regretted having told the Underdowns anything and I became adamant in my intention of going back to High Ghyll. In any case, Heathcliff would be worried. About his meals, of course.
They drove back with me. Mike searched the house while Sheila made another big thing about spending the night with me, but I wasn’t having that either. Mike reappeared with that look men wear when they’ve done something practical for a helpless woman.
“All clear,” he pronounced.
I promised to have coffee with Sheila in the morning, thanked them for their kindness and finally got them over the doorstep. My relief at their departure was already becoming tinged with a little regret as I watched their headlights sway and shake down the lonning. I went inside and locked the front door. The long-case clock in the hall made two of the chokey sounds which had been chimes before my desire for uninterrupted sleep had introduced a gag. It was just twenty-four hours since the prowler’s first visit had awoken me.
I yawned widely and went into the living-room.
Some shocks are too great even to shock. You just don’t believe them and your panic responses are dulled by your mind signalling error! error!
Sitting in my favourite well-worn leather armchair, smiling as though to welcome his dearest friend, was the man with the curly beard.
Two things prevented me from screaming and running. One was that he had my shotgun across his knees. The other was that he had Heathcliff draped round his shoulder, purring contentedly.
“Forgive me if I don’t get up,” he said.
“I should prefer it,” I answered tremulously.
“The thing is, I feel I owe you an explanation.”
His voice was educated, his tone conversational.
“You couldn’t make it an apology, I suppose?” I said. Irony was always my first resort in times of stress.
He considered, then shook his head.
“No. It would be hypocritical to apologize for something I enjoyed, wouldn’t it?”
I was glad he’d said it. It’s odd, isn’t it? Two seconds of chat in a nice educated voice and already I needed reminding I was talking to a nut.
“Do you fancy coffee?” I said in my best Home Features manner. Put your guest at ease. And once you’re in the kitchen either pick up a carving knife or open the back door and run like mad.
“No, thanks,” he said. “A s
cotch would be nice though. How did you find the police?”
“Just picked up one of those big pointed hats and there was one underneath,” I said as I poured two very stiff drinks.
“Ha ha. Bad as you anticipated?”
“Anticipated?”
“In your articles,” he said. “You didn’t have many good words to say for them, did you?”
“You’ve read my articles?”
“Oh yes,” he answered, smiling. “In a manner of speaking, you could say that’s why I’m here.”
“A fan, no less,” I said, handing him his drink. I’d half thought of chucking it in his face but the kind of start that that was likely to give me would hardly get me to the front door.
“In a way,” he said. “This must all be marvellous copy for you!”
“Gee, thanks. I’m glad I’m not a war correspondent.”
“Don’t be nervous,” he said sympathetically. “Enjoy your drink and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Sympathy from a psychopath is like being cuddled by a tarantula. But I didn’t say that. I sipped my stiff drink and hoped it would make me brave while his made him drunk.
“Those articles of yours caused great interest down at the club,” he said.
“Club?”
“The golf club. They were quite a talking point in the bar after our Sunday morning round. Well, they would be, with Jimmy being a member.”
“Jimmy … ?” I was getting as bad as Ambler with my one-word echoes.
“Jimmy Lincoln, your ex.”
“Jimmy! You mean Jimmy put you up to this!”
“Oh no,” he said, shocked. “It was just that with Jimmy being a member, it added an extra something to our discussions. A sort of expert witness, you know.”
I felt surprisingly distressed, though it should have come as no surprise that Jimmy with a few drinks in his belly would be capable of giving the details of our sex life a public airing in a golf-club bar.
“The general feeling was that you were being a bit hard on the men,” he went on. “I know you’re a journalist and journalists can’t afford little artistic luxuries like accuracy and objectivity, but in that last piece, what did you call it?—“Looking Down—the Masculine View”—well, there you really did become rather hysterical, we thought. I put the point to Jimmy.”
“Oh, good old Jimmy,” I said, pouring more drink. “What did good old Jimmy have to say?”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” said the man. “That’s all he said. This sort of confirmed the general feeling that what women like you really needed—you know, anti-men and women’s libbers, that sort of thing—what you needed was a sample of the goods you were complaining about. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was our unanimous conclusion that anyone raping you would be doing mankind at large a not inconsiderable favour.”
“Jesus!” I cried in horror. “You mean you were deputed to come up here and …”
“Oh no!” he said, smiling. “At the golf club we just talk. Interesting ideas—shoot Arthur Scargill, drop H-bombs on Moscow, set fire to Ireland—but they’re just words. Only this time, somehow the idea really got into my mind. I was coming up to Carlisle on business and I knew you’d be in the cottage …”
“How the hell did you know that? How did you know where High Ghyll was, anyway?” I demanded.
“Why, I’ve been here a couple of times with Jimmy,” he answered. “Weekends walking. Great! I love it here. I mentioned to Jimmy I was going to be in this part of the world this week and suggested we rendezvoused here at the weekend but he said he was sorry but you would be in occupation and he didn’t feel he could ask you to change your plans. He’s a bit scared of you, is Jimmy.”
I poured myself yet another whisky. He smiled and shook his head and refused.
“So, let’s get it straight,” I said. “You decide, all on your own, to slip out of your comfy hotel, drive forty miles, park the car, walk across the fells at night, and do a bit of raping! Christalmighty! Is this a regular hobby of yours?”
“Oh no!” he said. “This was the first time. Unless you count a couple of parties, and that was sort of half and half, if you know what I mean. But the thing is, and this is why I’m here, what do you feel about it now? I planned to wait and see what you wrote in your article—I felt pretty sure you’d make an article out of it—but I couldn’t wait. It’s been on my mind all day, my colleagues thought I must be ill! I had to hear it straight from you, as soon as possible, while it’s fresh in your mind and before you sensationalize it for the press. What do you really think about it now?”
He looked at me with the apprehensive eagerness of an L-driver waiting the result of his test. I was by now drunk enough to want to giggle at the lunacy of the situation. Then my eyes saw that his right hand was coiled so tightly round the trigger guard of my shotgun that his knuckles were white, and the impulse to giggle faded and died. A couple of years earlier I had worked on a series about the treatment of the criminally insane. In fact, because of the paper who’d commissioned it, the series had really been an anthology of instances of patients whose first action on being released, ostensibly cured, had been to commit another act of violence. Like most journalists I accept, within bounds, that whoever pays the piper calls the tune. At the same time (again, like most journalists) whatever the market I make sure that the topic is as meticulously researched as I can manage. And I’d come out of that series with the firm conviction that it wasn’t the convicted loonies we’d locked up that should worry us but the undetected loonies going happily about their everyday business waiting for the call.
This fellow’s call had come. Perhaps it was inevitable. Or perhaps if he’d joined another golf club he’d have stayed happy with his fantasies and a bit of half-and-half at parties. My task in the next few minutes was simply to convince him that it was as safe to leave me alive and well and able to talk as it was to leave me with a big hole in my head.
“Are you sure you won’t have another drink?” I said.
He shook his head impatiently.
“By the way, what’s your name?” I burbled. “I can’t sit here just calling you ‘you,’ can I?”
I merely wanted to establish a climate of confidence, but I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
He regarded me narrowly. I’d often wondered what that meant, but now I saw. It means the kind of close scrutiny you get from a man who thinks you’re trying to tell him he got you pregnant at the office party last Christmas.
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ll stick with ‘you.’”
“Oh no,” he said. “You’re right. I mean, you could always find out by having a chat with someone at the golf club, couldn’t you? Patrick’s the name. Patrick Craik.”
“Patrick Craik,” I echoed. “Well, who worries about euphony these days?”
“Now we know all about each other and are both sitting comfortably, why don’t you begin,” he said. He made a slight movement with the shotgun. He might just have been adjusting his position in the chair, but I wasn’t going to put the rent on it. I began.
“Look, it was a shock, I was terrified, there’s no way of getting away from that,” I said. Disarm him with honesty, then flatter him with lies, that was my chosen line.
“How terrified were you?” he asked with great interest.
“Out of my wits!” I said. “Who wouldn’t be! You would be if you woke up in the middle of the night and heard someone trying to get in at your window.”
“That’s right,” he said. “And if I’d had a shotgun in my hands when they appeared, I’d have used it! But you didn’t.”
“Yes I did!” I protested indignantly.
“Oh no,” he said, smiling in a very superior kind of way. “Not when you had me full in your sights. And even when you did blast off after me, you made sure you missed!”
So my aim had been that bad, I thought ruefully. And, of course, this loony didn’t know that his head remained on his neck only by courtesy of a t
ube of witch-green eye make-up!
It didn’t seem the moment to disillusion him.
“Well, you don’t just kill people dead,” I said feebly. “Not when you haven’t been introduced.”
“Precisely!” he said triumphantly. “But I would have fired. Any man would. You didn’t want to harm me. And what did you do next?”
I considered.
“I shut the window, had a drink, and went back to bed,” I replied.
“You see!” he said. “You see! Why didn’t you go for help?”
Because there was a bloody lunatic roving around outside! I shouted internally.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I’d wait till the morning, that was all.”
“Because it’d be safer in daylight?” he said.
“Yes. That’s right,” I said, beginning to let my irritation show. “Because it’d be a bloody sight safer in daylight. Wouldn’t you agree about that?”
“Oh yes. I’d agree,” he said, smiling. “But tell me, why then before it was fully light did you get up out of bed and open your window again? Go on, explain that, eh? Explain that!”
He was bouncing up and down on his seat in excitement. Heathcliff opened an eye and gave a silent miaow of admonition. I imitated him and let out a silent shriek of anger and indignation and incredulous disgust. But the expression on my face was (I hoped) one of interested reflection.
“You mean that perhaps it was because I hoped you might still be out there and wanted to let you in?” I said.
“It could be,” he said, nodding at me encouragingly like a dedicated teacher leading on a slow-thinking pupil. “All right. At first you’re terrified. It’s dark and you wake up suddenly and there’s someone at your window. For all you know it’s a gang of burglars!”
He said this as if fear of being robbed was the most intense feeling known to man! Perhaps it is. They make the laws, and crimes against property have always carried the top penalties.
“But even then, you don’t try to hurt me,” he went on. “You don’t go for help either. You just lock yourself in! And a couple of hours later after you’ve got over the initial terror, what do you do? You get up and open the window!”
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