In this unsettled mood, I walked through the house, opening doors and briefly looking into shadowy rooms. I thought I’d head down to the kitchen and stay in the warmth there and wait for them. If they were going to the reed beds again the following day, I intended to ask if I could join them . . . after all, it would be interesting to meet members of their family which, I’d come to understand, was a huge and straggling thing with a quite a lot of doubt about the exact nature of the relationships between some of them.
On the way down the stairs, I stopped. One step was very wet and the one below it had upon it an unusually rounded and quivering pool of water across its whole length. On an instant, I was seized with fear, huge and irrational and more real than I can describe. So repulsive was the idea of placing my foot on either step that the water may as well have been thickened and congealing blood. In my heightened state, I became convinced that it had been deposited there deliberately to halt me in my progress down to the kitchen. I feel strange about what I did next because it could surely only be regarded as the action of a mad woman, but I swung my leg over the bannister and inched my way downwards past the two grotesque steps and onwards to the bottom in that manner.
I took up a position at the kitchen table and determined that I would wait there until the sisters came home as it was now beyond my courage to walk freely around the house while I was alone in it. When they did return, they stood talking in the hall for some time, and I could plainly hear them. I heard Marina say: ‘But I can’t do the cooking as good as you and she wouldn’t like that if she’s a doctor as she keep saying.’
‘We should never have agreed to it in any case,’ Betty replied. ‘We ain’t servants to the high and mighty.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind her, I don’t, she don’t know no better. Least she ain’t nasty particular.’
‘She couldn’t learn me nothing, even if she is high learned.’
‘Do you don’t go, Betty. Please. Don’t leave me in here by my own.’
‘I can’t stay, Rina, I’m dilvered. Every time I walk round a corner or into another room I’m all on a dudder just in case . . .’
‘I know you’re wholly afraid, but we did agree, and that’s a lot of money, so it’s worth it.’
‘Blast the money, Rina, I can’t set my two eyes on him, but I’d be dead. I know it. It’s different for you being a favourite of his.’
Now I could hear them coming nearer and I prepared myself as best I could; I took in a couple of deep breaths and exhaled slowly through my mouth.
Marina came in first. ‘Oh! Miss Wood, you give us a fright!’ she said, and as she had so often done before, she parted her lips and displayed her goat-like teeth in an unpleasant parody of a smile.
Betty, however, said nothing in greeting to me. Instead she gazed into my face with unashamed intensity and after a few minutes hesitation, sat down opposite me and began to frown.
‘Kettle’s hot,’ I said, and could think of nothing else to follow it with.
‘Stop gorping at Miss Wood, Betty! What’s the matter with you, putting on parts like that?’
‘Look at that face,’ Betty whispered. ‘Something’s happened.’
‘Don’t mind Betty, Miss Wood, she’s as duzzy as they come; she talks a load of squit.’
I put my elbows on the table and my face in my two hands to hide from Betty’s gaze, but it was far too late for that.
‘You came up against him,’ Betty whispered. ‘You saw he and he saw you.’
Where I thought I might find some simple human companionship and solace, the women had done nothing but increase my fear. I stood up—I think—and stared at each of them in turn. ‘He, you call everything he! The doors, the windows, the chairs, the tables are all he. Which “he” are you talking about now?’ I shouted.
The sisters looked at each other. ‘She don’t know, Betty,’ Marina said. ‘The poor lamb hasn’t worked it out.’
For once, Betty took command of the situation. ‘You best come outside with us,’ she whispered, ‘we can’t say nothing inside here, we can’t.’
‘There’s a tempest out there, Betty,’ Marina said, ‘we’ll be soaked to the bone.’
‘I ain’t saying nothing inside the house,’ Betty persisted and Marina and I had no option but to accompany her out through the front door and a good distance along the marsh path before she stopped and turned to face us, deadly white and shaking.
There was a hooligan of a wind out there and the sky was full of roiling clouds of deadly grey shot through with strands of purple, and the air was yellow and thunderous. I was frozen within minutes and wet. And afraid.
‘Come here close,’ Betty said, ‘and you Rina; because it’s you to do the saying of the name, not me.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ I muttered when I was within inches of her face, ‘must everything be so dramatic, woman?’
Marina had pressed in behind me so that her lips were close to my ear; it was as if I was sandwiched between two lunatics. ‘It’s true what my sister says,’ she whispered, ‘do she tell you, he might go for her, do I tell you, he won’t.’
‘Well, get on with it and tell me then!’
I felt Marina’s breath on the back of my neck. ‘Jack Werrett,’ she whispered. ‘He’s wholly at war with us. He thinks he owns that house, but he don’t. We do.’
‘Rina will cook for you,’ Betty said, ‘she don’t cook as good as me accordingly to her, but I ain’t going back in there now the name is out. Rina will pack my things and bring them out to the gate.’
‘She’s wholly afraid, she is,’ Marina whispered, ‘she don’t want him jumping on her out of the dark, she don’t like he did when we were kids.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s Sake, this is ridiculous. At least if you must go, Betty, let me take you to Stabman’s Reach in my car.’
Betty shook her head and looked over my shoulder at the house. ‘I can walk; the fell-gate will still be open this time of day. I shouldn’t never have come here in the first place.’
‘And why did you? I was happy on my own,’ I said.
We turned then and began the walk back to the house. As we approached, every window glinted in the light and images of moving clouds showed upon them strongly.
‘It was Rina’s masterous plan to come here. She got it into her head you’d be better off with us to watch over you.’
‘Do you have to do everything together though?’ I asked.
‘We mostly always have,’ Marina said, ‘it’s never been taught out of us.’
As Marina and I walked into the house, I glanced up at the staircase. In the shadow-filled light, I could not see if the two steps were still wet, but not being inclined to loiter about in the proximity of the stairs, I headed for the kitchen while Marina packed Betty’s things and took them out to her. I was close to finishing my research and because of all the queer and hysterical stuff that had gone on I was considering leaving too in a week or so.
When Marina came down to the kitchen, she put her finger to her lips, although it had not been my intention to speak at that moment anyway. ‘Don’t mind Betty,’ she said, ‘she’s a dansey-headed morsel and she do run on and that’s a fact. When I took her bags out, I promised her I wouldn’t say that name inside the house, so nor must you, mind, not even once. And if you ask me, it’s best not even to think about it.’
I shrugged and stood up to make us some tea. ‘It must be hard for you sometimes having such a nervous sister. I’ve got a difficult one as well, so we’re similar in that respect. Look, now Betty’s gone I need to tell you about something odd that happened to me this morning.’
‘We ain’t the least bit similar, Miss Wood, we ain’t. Nobody is like the Werretts.’
‘Nobody but the Werretts themselves,’ I said, attempting to smile at her.
‘Listen, Miss Wood, I’m wholly frazzled myself; it’s not easy being here, so don’t tell me no stories, I ain’t in the mood to hear them.’
Her narrow face was skul
l-like and white and the darkness of her eyes unsettled me, but I did not look away. ‘Okay then, I was going to ask you something else as well; if I were to take a day off work tomorrow, and you’re going to the reed beds again, could I come too?’
‘What, not working, Miss Wood?’ Marina said, and she put a sly emphasis on ‘working’. ‘Do you do come,’ she went on, ‘you’ll just get cold, and there ain’t nothing down there to see besides a lot of men and reeds. Howsomever, I suppose there’s no harm in tourists seeing what real work is. Yes, Miss Wood, all right, you can come, though it’s a tidy step, it is.’
Being with Marina in the quiet gloom of the kitchen made me feel calm once more and it was as if my episode of fear was some freak occurrence that no longer mattered; I was left now with an itching curiosity about the lives of these women and what it was that caused them so much dread. I put a mug of tea on the table in front of her. ‘So, will he be working there in the reed beds?’ I asked eventually. She did not answer me immediately; it was as if I’d said something so repulsive that she was unable to draw breath into her lungs properly. ‘Sorry, I was being noisy,’ I said, ‘. . . it was just something to say.’
‘Well which is it? Are you curious or not curious?’ she asked, suddenly very still and solemn.
‘Since I’ve learnt he’s involved in a dispute about this house with you, I have been curious, yes.’
‘You don’t see it, do you?’ she whispered, squinting at me as if I was some low verminous creature
***
The following morning was full of silvery light, and the sky, which had pressed in upon us heavy with rain and disturbance in the days before, was calm and mottled with strands of drifting white cloud. It was a fair walk to the reed beds, but if for no other reason I was pleased I’d gone with Marina because her mood shifted from one of solemnity to a cheerfulness that I could see for once was perfectly genuine. She asked me questions about London—how many people lived there, what kind of work they all did, and whether there really were coconuts growing in the city. We came finally to an estuary inlet where a small knot of men, mostly elderly, were scything down the dry reeds and stacking them on the bank in what Marina described to me as shooves. For a while the men did not acknowledge us as we stood watching them, Marina with her arms folded and I with my hands in my coat pockets. Eventually, one of them looked in our direction and nodded briefly.
‘She’s come down to make sure you’re all doing your work proper, Tom,’ Marina said.
‘Betty’s took off?’ he asked, wading through the water to the bank.
‘Scarpered yesterday,’ Marina said, ‘she wouldn’t bide there longer.’
‘Well, ain’t that a caution!’ he declared, keeping his eyes steadily on my face.
I sensed that the small gesture he made to Marina with the side of his mouth and the quick movement of his eye was understood by her instantly, and once more I was under the impression that thoughts were transmitted between the two, as it had been with Betty.
‘This is one of my uncles,’ Marina explained. ‘He knows a deal more than me about certain things, he does. She’s wholly curious, Tom . . . Betty made such a business of it; couldn’t do it quietly.’
‘So, what have you told?’ he asked her. It was as if the question, even though spoken in no more than a whisper, was heard by the other men, as they came through the water and formed a silent group around him.
‘Nothing proper,’ Marina said. ‘I thought you could tell about some of the miracles and marvels, seeing as you’re his generation and was witness to things a mite more than me and Betty ever was.’
Tom nodded and took some time to inspect my face in great detail, and I, in response, tried not to look down or blink, and then as if dragging something heavy upwards that had for a long time lain rotting on the earth, he began to speak. ‘We don’t say the name these days, and it’s better that way, because it’s a rum old do, and that’s a fact. What that man can do with water is more than masterous. He done it even as a boy. We all seen it in our time. He can make water rise up, he can make it into shapes, surprising shapes like women and dogs, and waves and funnels and spouts, and once I heard he made a staircase out of water and he climbed up it to the very top, he did, so he could look out into the distance.’
‘I heard that too,’ one of the other men whispered, ‘and he could walk straight across the top of any kind of water if he had a mind to. Round these parts, we call him the Flood Man.’
‘And what about the time he made them water horses and had them galloping all over the marsh. He can’t have been more than fourteen when he done that.’
I listened without flinching to this lunacy as I could see the men’s eyes watching me with the utmost care, as if they were waiting for me to display my scorn. But I was caught in a strange condition in which my mind did not believe him, but, evidenced by the creeping of my skin and the churning of my gut, my body decidedly did. As Tom talked, it came to my mind that the morning I’d gone to my room to find my pillow and blanket wet, the damp area had been in the shape of a human form, as if someone had bathed and then lain down wet on my bed . . . or someone who was always wet had lain down, a different more primitive area of my thinking suggested.
‘. . . he went away to Italy and such foreign parts and used to send us postcards from time to time, and when he came home, he came with money, and seeing as he bought that big old house, I’d say it was a great deal of money.’
‘We think he must have got rich by showing off his tricks to foreigners,’ Marina added.
I did not utter a single word in response, and did not speak to Marina on the way home, either. I was aware that she glanced at me sideways from time to time and things unspoken hung there in the cold air between us like a line of washing made stiff with frost. By the time the house came into sight on the horizon, I’d deduced that Jack Werrett practised hypnotism, and what better victims than a group of uneducated men who’d known each other all their lives and had scarcely been further than Stabman’s Reach—men who’d managed beneath their natural male arrogance to retain the pure innocence and imagination of children? It wasn’t my area of study, but I believed I’d come across the makings of modern folklore and knew there’d be people at the University who’d be thrilled to have been with me listening to the marshman’s story.
As Marina and I stood together at the front door of the house with its faded blue paint, we looked at each other very frankly for the first time, all posturing and politeness gone. ‘Thank you for taking me there,’ I began. ‘But look, before we go in, I want to know if you’ve actually seen your uncle inside the house.’
‘Betty says you have seen him,’ she replied. ‘She could tell from your face yesterday.’
‘No. A strange thing happened on the stairs that perturbed me,’ I said, ‘the thing I tried to tell you about the other day.’
‘Water was in it,’ she responded.
‘Yes, and most peculiar it was,’ I told her.
‘There you are then,’ she said, opening the front door, ‘You seen him, like Betty said. It’s just you ain’t allowing yourself to know it proper.’
I saw no point in arguing with her. It appeared that in her mind the water had become the man himself, and for all I knew the merging of one thing into another—shape shifting one could say—was a common phenomenon in the creation of folk tales. I became convinced the theory was entirely plausible when I reflected on the fact that these remote country people did not distinguish objects from humans, addressing all as ‘he’.
When finally Marina was ready to hear my story, I know I spoke to her in a very flat tone, as a remnant of the fear I’d felt the day before had returned and I didn’t want her to become aware of it in my voice.
‘Do you know what surface tension is?’ I asked. She frowned and looked as if she was about to roll her eyes. ‘It’s that bulge you see around a drop of water before it flattens out and sinks away,’ I went on. ‘I came downstairs yesterday and saw th
at two of the steps were wet, but the second one was quivering with a great dome of water, like a blown up pillow. It was unnatural, menacing.’
‘Like a gigantic bleb,’ Marina said, shifting her eyes away from my face and staring fixedly at the china on the dresser behind me. She was as pale as I had ever seen her over the few months we’d lived together. Perhaps it was because she did not respond immediately that I laughed suddenly—as in truth our situation was ridiculous—but the sound of my laughter came ricocheting back to me, high-pitched and startling and I realised my nerves were completely shot away.
Marina turned her eyes upon me again. ‘We’ve got to leave this bleeding house,’ she said. ‘We should leave today, only the fell-gate is closed until tomorrow, so you’ll have to come to Stabman’s Reach the long way round on foot with me. Leave your stuff here.’
‘Not without my car,’ I replied. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Did you step on that water; did you put your foot in it?’
‘I couldn’t bring myself to; couldn’t bear the idea of contact with it,’ I replied.
Marina Werrett stared at me, her head lowered and her dark eyes steady on my face. ‘I’d hoped you’d be safe with me here,’ she whispered. ‘He used to like me. Come over to the village and I’ll give you back some money. You to say the amount; I don’t care.’
‘I’ll leave the minute the gate is open tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘I’m not going to abandon my work and my car overnight for anything. I’ll meet you in that café tomorrow at ten.’ I gazed down at her big hands with their swelling knuckles and felt a great rush of liking for her as it dawned on me fully that she was terrified of Jack Werrett and she’d only come to live in the house for my sake, thinking me somehow in danger.
Seven Strange Stories Page 10