‘Look there,’ he said.
Alice couldn’t see anything.
‘There,’ insisted the Reverend. ‘Just at the end of my finger. Can you see a little brass plaque?’
Alice moved forwards, squinted, moved forwards again. Yes, she could see it, set into the wall about eight inches above the ground. The plaque was very small, about twelve inches by ten, and it was drab with oxidization. She peered at it to read the inscription, traced the words with her fingers with a growing feeling of unease. It said, in very plain letters, cut deep into the thick metal:
KEEP ME SAFE
That was all. No name, no date, nothing. For a moment, she wondered whether the priest had not invented the whole thing as an excuse to keep her there talking. ‘Keep me safe’? What kind of an inscription was that? She had not even known that it was legal to hide a body in the wall of a church like that. She examined the plaque again, rubbed it with the tip of her finger, not liking the dirt which came off on to her hand.
‘That’s where he is,’ chirped the Reverend Holmes. ‘Just his ashes, of course, and his papers, ahh. He was a writer, you know, in the … ahh … old days. Quite famous too, in his way. Had his manuscript buried with him. I always wondered what was in it.’
Alice ignored him. Behind the half-inch or inch of plaque and the three-inch wall behind it, there was a mystery. A story as immediate and as poignant as the one behind that little metal door on which was engraved:
Something inside me remembers and will not forget.
She jerked away from the plaque as if she had been stung. The Reverend Holmes was standing above her, an expression of slight concern on his good-natured face.
‘Are you all right?’
Alice nodded. What had she been doing? For a moment there, she had been somewhere else, had almost seen, almost known something of tremendous, dizzying importance … Not for the first time in these few days, she wondered if she was quite sane. Surely, there had been a man … a scent of the circus in the air … an altered light. And more than that, a strong compulsion to pull back the plaque, loosen the stones … to find, to see …
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘This is very interesting. I really had no idea.’ The sentences were meaningless in her mouth, but sufficed to give her the courage to ask the question she wanted to ask.
‘Tell me …’ she said, ‘do you know a girl called Virginia Ashley? Red-haired girl … slim, very pretty? She has a friend, a dark man with a pony-tail … black trenchcoat. Have you seen them near here?’
The Reverend Holmes thought about it for a moment.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said at last. ‘Not that that means much, you know … my memory isn’t what it should be … especially … ah … faces … but I might … Redhead, did you say? No. But I’ll certainly look out for her if she’s a friend of yours. What was the name again?’
‘No, it’s all right,’ said Alice. ‘It’s nothing. I just thought you might know her. I really do have to go now. Thank you so much. Thank you.’
And on that, she turned and left the church, almost running through the churchyard, even though most of the mess had by now been cleared up: only a toppled gravestone remained and some meaningless scrawlings in red spray-paint. The sunlight was bright in the lane outside, the walk across the fields to Cambridge so different from the walk of her dream that Alice began to feel better. No, it could not have happened. Even the trail of footprints across the cornfield (three tracks together and a fourth, winding cautiously round the outside in the shadows) might have been someone else’s.
And while Alice made her way along the Backs towards the town, a figure walked softly into the church, came in through the vestry door and hesitated at the entrance to the nave, the light from the stained-glass window throwing multicoloured reflections on to her bright hair. For a moment, she watched the priest standing by the altar in silence, then she came towards him with hardly a sound, her ballet shoes barely a whisper of leather against the stone as she ran, cat-like, to the altar. As she passed it, the sanctuary light went out, but the priest did not notice.
One
ROBERT WAS MY oldest friend; my best and only true friend. He was two years older than I; that made him twenty-seven, but to me he was so much more mature and aware that he seemed to move in an entirely different sphere. He had been in the war (I myself had been judged unfit for service because of my poor eyesight), and had been sent home from Alamein after taking a volley of shrapnel in his leg; now he walked with a limp, which in my eyes gave him even greater sophistication. I would have given anything to be like him, to be handsome and popular, to have followed him to the war and to have been a hero. He was everything I admired and wanted to emulate. He was taller than I was, loose-limbed and naturally at ease in the slightly overlarge suits and overcoats he tended to affect, with brown hair falling carelessly over eyes which were clear and humorous. He was studying English literature, the course he had been obliged to give up at the beginning of the war, and had already nurtured in me a passion for Keats and Rossetti and Swinburne. He smoked foul-smelling cigarettes, spent hours in crowded coffee-shops, drank cup after cup of black coffee and talked incessantly about literature. I had read some of his writings, and they were youthful, incisive, sometimes gently self-mocking. There was never any doubt in my mind then that his work would some day be published; I followed his progress with pride and admiration, but no envy. That came later, with Rosemary.
I would no more have hidden recent events from Robert than forgotten to breathe. Of course I told him. I told him everything in those days, he accepting this proof of my admiration of him as if it were his due, and with the kind of half-contemptuous indulgence he might have shown to a younger brother. I never resented this, feeling privileged that he should choose my company over that of so many others, and with him I shared my passions and my enthusiasms and even my dreams, which for days had been filled with Rosemary.
I found him in his usual place, drinking coffee and reading a book. I must have looked a sorry sight; I had not slept that night at all, my suit was crumpled, my eyes watery and my hair uncombed. Besides that, I had the beginnings of a streaming cold from jumping into the river; my throat was sore and my limbs ached. I told you I was no man of action. He grinned easily at me as I came in, stubbing out his cigarette in the marble ashtray in front of him. He put down the book he was reading (Morris’s News from Nowhere) and beckoned the waitress to fetch another pot of coffee and a cup.
‘Have you read this?’ he demanded, waving the book vaguely in my direction. ‘Marvellous. Did you know …’ His brow creased slightly as he took in my crumpled appearance. ‘What happened to you?’ he queried, with some amusement. ‘You look like a mad inventor. Have you been out on the tiles again, or are you simply cultivating a kind of Byronic disarray?’
I swallowed, trying to tame the hair which was falling over my eyes.
‘I thought you had to give a class this morning,’ continued Robert. ‘Aren’t you late?’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s past nine.’
I shook my head, flinging my hat on the table. ‘I cancelled it.’
‘How very dashing of you,’ he said. ‘Go on then, don’t keep me in suspense. I suppose whatever it is is something terribly exciting to make you skip classes. You’re always so enviably precise.’ And he sighed, a kind of self-mocking dramatic sigh you might have expected from Keats or Beardsley. He was laughing at me again, gently making fun of me, but underneath that I could tell that he was really puzzled, perhaps a little worried. Robert’s veneer of sophistication was really rather thin, despite appearances; what others often mistook for pretentiousness was in reality nothing but protective coloration. I think retrospectively that he was an insecure man. Propelled from the hermetic atmosphere of public school and Cambridge into a traumatic, though mercifully brief, period of combat, he had returned to Cambridge to escape from ugliness in whatever way he could; he had retreated into the close circle of the Cambridge intellectuals, going to
lectures, staying up late to talk about art and poetry in smoky coffee-shops. To him it was all escapism, and while his doting father was willing to encourage and finance his study, Robert was happy to remain the eternal student, gravitating towards ever more intellectual pursuits, shielded from pain and the unwanted complexity of adult relationships. Young as I was then, I saw only the carefree, handsome exterior; later, with Rosemary, I saw my friend stripped bare, but at the beginning he was my strength, my buffer against a cruel world. He encouraged me in my work, talked to me, tolerated me; my gratitude was such that at that time I would willingly have died for him.
My story must have sounded garbled to him; I remember his smile, his hand coming down soothingly on my shoulder.
‘Steady down, old fellow,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m never at my best first thing in the morning.’
I accepted his offer of coffee, tried to stop my hands from trembling around the china cup, began again. I think I was more coherent then; he listened to me, a faint crease between his brows, the cup held in the palm of one hand, a cigarette in the other, its smoke idling unhindered towards the ceiling. Once or twice he asked a question, nodded; I stumbled forward in my narrative, trying vainly to put words to what I felt, the words cleaving to my tongue as I spoke. When I had stopped speaking, I drank deeply from my cup, blew my nose and waited, watching him over my glasses, half-contorted with fear lest he should laugh at me, for he did sometimes hurt me with his mockery, although he never meant to. Maybe he saw the fear in my eyes, because he paused, almost appraisingly, as if deciding whether to treat my story seriously or to take it as a joke. He took a drag at his cigarette, blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth and frowned.
‘Seems like a funny kind of business to me,’ he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. ‘I wonder if you’re not landing yourself in trouble somehow.’
I shook my head violently. ‘Oh, no! If only you’d seen her, Robert, you’d know that isn’t true. I know how odd it sounds, but … oh, confound it! There’s no way I can put it into words. She’s a miracle, Rob, a dream come true. She’s from another age.’
Robert cast me a humorous look.
‘She certainly seems to have taken you back to the age of chivalry,’ he said.
‘Oh, please be serious!’ I said. ‘If only you had seen her.’
‘I doubt whether it would have made any difference,’ he said lazily, ‘I think I’m immune to women. They never seem to have any conversation other than themselves and their clothes and other women. I know your experience isn’t vast, but believe me, after you’ve known a few …’
His eyes twinkled, and I knew he was making fun of me; that languid tone was not the real Robert, but the man behind the many affectations was an elusive character, and I had not encountered him often.
‘However, I admit to some curiosity,’ he said, ‘I have not yet encountered the perfect woman, and I would very much like to see her.’
I sighed with relief, clapped Robert on the back and managed to spill a cup of coffee in my enthusiasm. I felt like a schoolboy who has just been complimented by a sixth-form hero.
‘Good man!’ I cried. ‘We’ll see her now. Shall we? You won’t be disappointed, Rob. You’ll love her, you really will. You won’t be disappointed.’
As it happened, I was right; he did love her, and he was not disappointed. Cold enough comfort that offers me, even though I could not be expected to know – how could I have known? I am blameless, I know that, but the knowledge does not stop my ultimate guilt, or obliterate the memory of the youthful joy I felt that day, as I happily led my friend across the river to his destruction.
Two
WELL, THOUGHT ALICE, that line of enquiry had only led to a baffling dead end. The Reverend Holmes had certainly never seen Ginny or her friends, nor had anything he told Alice seemed to corroborate her dream. She was still inclined to think that Ginny had gone out with friends to buy or sell drugs and what Alice herself had experienced had simply been an isolated incident of memory loss caused by exhaustion or the beginnings of some virus. Fair enough. It sounded convincing. But there was still the mystery of Ginny to solve; still Alice’s resolution to befriend the girl and try to give her what help she could; and to do that, she needed to know more about her. Joe? She remembered his chilly response to her earlier questions on the phone, and doubted that he would be of any help. Who, then?
Alice pondered the question for a moment, frowning, then her face cleared. Reaching for the directory, she flicked quickly through the medical section, allowing her fingers to come to rest on the letter F.
‘Hello? My name is Alice Farrell. I wonder if you could give me a few details on a former patient of yours.’
‘Please wait a moment.’ The receptionist’s voice was cool and competent. ‘I’ll put you through to the doctor on duty.’
Alice waited for a few minutes, while the hospital’s hold system piped would-be soothing music through the earpiece. Then she heard the tone change, and a man’s voice, dry and faintly irritable, answered.
‘Yes? Menezies speaking.’
Alice repeated what she had told reception.
‘Why the enquiry?’ the doctor asked. ‘Are you professionally interested?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, in that case, I’m very busy.’
‘Just a few details, please. This girl is going to be staying with me for a few days, and I’m a little worried about her mental condition.’
‘Then make an appointment for her. All cases are treated as confidential here. I don’t discuss my patients.’
‘I don’t need confidential details,’ began Alice, ‘I just need to know if a girl called Virginia Ashley was a patient here, and whether she is likely to need special help—’
‘Look,’ snapped the doctor. ‘There are dozens of doctors in this hospital. I don’t know the case at all. Obviously someone else treated her. If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll tell you the name of the colleague who dealt with her case, and you can contact him.’
And he slammed the receiver back on to hold.
Alice waited again. After a much longer time, the receiver was lifted, and she heard the man’s voice again, more distant this time, as if the line had suddenly worsened.
‘Ms Farrell?’
‘Yes?’
‘Miss Ashley was admitted to Fulbourn last Christmas on a short-term basis. That’s all the information I’m able to give.’
‘Can I talk to the doctor in charge of her case?’ said Alice.
‘I’m sorry; that’s impossible.’
‘Could you give me the name of the doctor?’
‘Look, I’m afraid there is no way you can talk to Doctor Pryce,’ said Dr Menezies. ‘My colleague died last week. The funeral was yesterday.’
One
SHE WAS GONE when we got to the house, and I knew a dreadful instant of panic, certain that she had never been real, that I had imagined her, and that like the snow-child, she had simply dissolved into air and water at the first rays of the sun. Mrs Brown was out, and I remember calling through the house, every room throwing back the sound of her absence in my face, every breath a new emptiness. I must have been more ill than I thought, for my head raged with fever, but none of that registered. All I could think was, she was gone. She was gone, and the one person I could trust with my mystery, my only friend, the only one who could understand, was looking at me with a mischievous expression, as if he did not believe me.
‘Look, there’s her bed,’ I cried, the crumpled coverlet in my hands. ‘The pillow she rested on. There’ll be hair on it. Let me see. Look! The cup she drank from, her flowers!’
‘Come on, old man,’ said Robert, gently. ‘Don’t take it so badly. Like as not she’s just stepped out for a walk.’ He patted my shoulder, and I flinched away.
‘She was here a minute ago, I swear—’
‘Have a drink, there’s a good chap. Sit down.’
He pushed
me gently into one of Mrs Brown’s soft leather armchairs, pressed a glass of sherry into my hand. My arm jerked violently; some of the sherry spilled. Patiently, he took the glass from me and refilled it. I drank, shuddered, drained the glass and closed my eyes. I have no way of explaining the power Rosemary had managed to gain over me, nor the despair which played in me, like the monotonous whirring of a toy train in a child’s spinning-top. She was gone, she was gone, she was gone, she was gone … Fragments of poetry entered my brain like flying glass, images like pieces of a torn canvas, tantalizing … the curve of a collar-bone here, the light on her hair, the turn of her mouth … I tried to get up from my chair, slipped. The world tilted.
‘Daniel!’ Robert’s voice was sharp. ‘Are you all right? Hey, Danny! Danny!’
A tremor in the earth as I fell.
Spangled darkness all around.
A voice, light as an aspen leaf, crystallizing in ether: ‘Is anything wrong?’
A brief glimpse of a figure standing in the doorway, head and shoulders etched in copper.
‘Where’s Daniel? Who are you?’ A voice made shrill by controlled hysteria.
Robert’s voice, ‘So you’re Rosemary.’
Then, in the darkness, a vision of wheels. Turning.
Two
JOE’S BAND WERE on the stage setting up. Joe waved and grinned at Alice as she came in, then returned to the business in hand, oddly competent in his chosen element, positioning speakers and amps and coiling cables with speed and economy of movement. Ginny was not yet there.
Alice made her way to the bar and ordered a drink, seating herself at a table by the side of the stage, where she would be able to see and hear everything. Little by little, the room began to fill up with all the variegated night-lifers of Cambridge, rubbing together in neon and shadow. Alice stood up and looked around; Ginny was still not there.
The Evil Seed Page 9