‘If the Chicken Man would stop thinking about his wife, she couldn’t hurt me,’ Eric put in. ‘I can only make dead people real if live people imagine them up and keep mulling over them.’
‘How do I fit into all this?’ I think I asked, turning back to look at them.
‘You don’t anymore, Miss Barker. Thank you for offering to buy the jacket anyway,’ Virginia said.
‘Well, what are you going to do now?’
‘There are no other jobs around here, at least not for thirteen-year-olds. Even if there were, hardly anyone would want a Pantun working for them; you must have heard the things they say about us, Miss Barker. We were lucky with the Chicken Man. Dead lucky.’
I stared at Eric and he stared back at me with his tiny mouth slightly ajar. I felt as if I’d been mentally electrocuted. ‘Do you believe me?’ he whispered, and before I could think about it, I nodded. ‘Your mouth is open,’ he said, and for the first time that morning he smiled at me, and as an odd and sudden shard of light appeared in the kitchen and on his face, I could see at the centre of the darkness of his eyes the holes that were his pupils, and I felt comforted.
That’s when it came to me that I should find some work for the boy to do around the cottage until I was due back in London to write up my research. I pay him the same as the Chicken Man did. He’s clumsy in the garden, and some days I can’t really find enough work to keep him occupied, so I let him sit at the kitchen table looking at my books or drawing his primitive little ant-like pictures. I want to know what he sees when he looks over towards the Aga and grins; he’s just started doing it recently, and I’ve asked him about it several times. He did it again this morning, and I slightly lost my temper. ‘Eric, stop staring into that corner all the time; it’s beginning to annoy me,’ I said.
‘It’s not my fault, Miss Barker, it’s yours.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t put him there, you did.’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘You wouldn’t like it if I told you, Miss Barker. But that man you’ve been thinking about all the time . . . well, maybe you shouldn’t think about him so much anymore.'
AGAIN
She was standing at the top of the stairs and the light from the landing window was so bright behind her that it was a while before I could see her face clearly. She put her funny little fingers up to her neck and swallowed. ‘This is your house, isn’t it, Richard?’ She stood swaying and ghastly white and moved one foot slowly forward as if to descend. ‘You’ll think me very silly, but I can’t remember why I’m here,’ she said.
I must have snapped to very fast; I remember an onslaught of thoughts roaring through my mind, some of them sick and frightened and others merely practical—freakishly so. Everyone was gathered in the drawing room and I was afraid that someone would open the door, step out into the hallway and see her just as I was doing, and I knew that there were some who would not have been able to countenance it, my wife in particular, as she and Diane were great friends. I heard my own voice, badly quivering and faint, say, ‘You have just come out of our spare room, Diane.’
‘Have I?’
‘You don’t know that?’
‘I said.’
‘So you did. I beg your pardon.’
Someone shrieked in the drawing room, but it wasn’t clear if it was caused by relief or nervous hysteria. Then one of them dropped a glass; I distinctly heard it smash on the parquet. Diane stretched her neck forward, listening.
‘Are we having a party, Richard?’
I tried to control the awful beating of my heart and the sick dread that was creeping over me. Strangely, part of me was detached and clear thinking—I have heard that such clarity can happen sometimes in certain unusual states of mind. ‘That’s right, Diane, a party,’ I whispered, struck suddenly by an overwhelming feeling of pity for her that I confess I never felt before. She was a rather dog-like little person. Our group had taken her on as a mascot, and she’d fulfilled that role well, keeping us entertained with her quaint observations at times when we otherwise would’ve been rather bored. I don’t mean to suggest that she was in any way funny . . . deliberately, so to speak.
However, my wife Celia became genuinely fond of her, and Diane certainly took a shine to her. They began to spend a lot of time together outside our circle which I must say I disliked. To put it more bluntly, I considered it to be repulsive and I found it hard to hide my displeasure. ‘But try to imagine what it would be like to have no relatives, Richard,’ Celia said more than once. ‘I know you find Diane irritating, but please be kindly towards her for my sake.’
Whilst most of our friends at the time were married couples who liked motoring and cruising and winter sports as well as witty conversations and parties, Diane was an unmarried person who, weather permitting, used to take long walks in the lanes around here with Celia. I never asked what they discussed—philosophy, apparently.
Diane turned her head to the right and looked down the corridor. She placed her hand on the newel post at the top of the stairs, and again her foot seemed to hover. ‘I can’t think what to do,’ she said, ‘I feel so muzzy. Have I been drinking a lot? This is your house, isn’t it Richard? I think I should go back to the spare room and rest a while.’
I believe I cried out sharply because her odd little face turned back towards me quickly. ‘Oh, I think not, Diane!’ I exclaimed, and I took a step or two closer to the bottom of the stairs in my agitation. ‘I absolutely do not advise that!’
You see, while there may have been a revolting side to what I was experiencing, the idea of her becoming awakened, so to speak, which she surely would do were she to return to our spare room, was unthinkable. That at least was what my growing pity for the creature had me decide.
I can only give a sketchy outline of the events that followed because each time I have thought back to those moments in which she stood looking down at me, my idea of what happened and what we actually said to each other skews slightly as if the event itself was cognisant and would avoid capture.
I felt as if a tremendous responsibility had been placed upon my shoulders; I had to remove her from the house as quickly as possible, that much at least I realised. I know I’ve always been someone who hankers to get off the beaten track and all that, but this was too queer by far for my liking. There were some raised voices and another shriek followed by a laugh. Diane blinked and gazed beyond me, still with one foot suspended as if to come forward. ‘Is that Celia I can hear?’ she asked.
I dared not look towards the drawing room door, and so take my eyes off her for one second. ‘The shriek or the laugh?’ I heard myself asking.
‘The shriek, I meant. Is she . . .’ She did not finish, instead she twisted slightly and turned her head to the window behind her. ‘It’s daytime,’ she declared. ‘I say! A party in the daytime.’ Then turning back, she took three steps down towards me, causing her face to fall into shadow and her silhouette to become strangely bulky and magnified.
‘What do you say to a walk in the garden, Diane?’ I asked, although I had no idea if this was even possible—I mean why would I know? It’s not as if I had any experience in these matters. At that point, I was seized by a sudden and powerful anger; I could think of a hundred other people more equipped to deal with the situation than I was, and I felt savagely aggrieved that it should’ve fallen to me. On the other hand, it was my house the event was taking place in—Celia had insisted on that. ‘Now that this has happened,’ she explained carefully to me after several quite bitter arguments on the matter, ‘can you and I not just perform this one last decent act? She was a very jolly person when she was outside our crowd. Besides, you know as well as I do that there is no one on her side of the thing to do it.’
‘Well if we had to do it for every waif and stray we came across in our lives . . .’ I began, but not caring much for the look on my wife’s face, I dropped the matter, and that gets me back to the tricky business of trying to get Diane
out of the house where no one could see her. I sensed her starting forward and I moved as swiftly as I could towards the back door, all the while looking behind me to make sure she was following. She was dreadfully white, dreadfully shaky and I believe I was too. My intention was to leave her out there in the garden in the hope she’d blow away.
I don’t go to church. I haven’t been since I was a much younger man. So I miss all the weddings, baptisms and funerals that take place in our small town. My parents are saddened by the fact and keep supposing that I’ll run into bad luck as a result of my atheism, and for a second or two, as I walked down our garden path with the thing following me, I felt I would do well to reacquaint myself with God at the earliest opportunity.
‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ Diane asked as we turned the corner down by the glasshouses, and that was the moment when everything changed—the ground wavered, then tilted and I felt the curious sensation of falling, yet I remained upright. Upright, but deeply furious—deeply; I had been well and truly duped.
I turned then and stared fully at her.
‘Richard, what on earth is wrong?’ she asked. ‘Your face has gone blotchy and peculiar.’
‘You want to smoke? You actually want to smoke?’
It was probably around three in the afternoon, early September, plenty of light in the sky, but clouded in a morose kind of way nevertheless, and there Diane Clarke stood in front of me on the path, pale—luminous even, in a white nightgown, one I recognised only at that moment as belonging to my wife. A nightgown that I must have touched, although perhaps not for a while.
Diane frowned and twisted her hands together. ‘Yes, I need a cigarette badly, and then would you mind awfully escorting me to my place, I feel so very strange.’
For the second time within the very same half hour, it felt as if all I knew, all that made up my world small though it may be by other people’s standards, had dropped away as suddenly as an avalanche flinging itself down a mountainside. But the game was up. I’d been the victim of the ultimate practical joke; a terrible but very convincing hoax. I’d been horribly frightened by the thing as it followed me down the garden path with the ends of the gown dragging and flapping behind it. It’d taken all my courage not to keep looking back once we’d reached the outside. I kept my eyes on the crazy paving and tried to control the thudding of my heart as we progressed towards the glasshouses and all the while I battled with waves of insistent nausea.
I’d rather taken Diane to be the sensitive type, artistic even, not the kind who’d agree to involvement in a prank like this. I knew instantly which of our friends were behind it, and which had decided to go along unprotestingly with what they took to be a marvellous jape. I just couldn’t fit Celia into the picture, couldn’t imagine her being involved in a thing as vulgar and detailed as this. Someone must have promised her something she couldn’t resist to cause her to acquiesce. My God! What loathsome friends I turned out to have.
I reached into my trouser pocket and pulled out my Craven A. Diane came closer. I backed away slightly—still in a sense clinging onto my first notion of what it was that had been standing on our top landing. I handed her the packet and my lighter at arm’s length.
‘You’re being awfully stiff and funny with me, Richard,’ she said. ‘Would you rather I went home alone so you can go back to the party?’
‘What? And I suppose they’ll all be hiding behind curtains in order to jump out on me when I walk in? I see it all now. Celia sent me forth to the kitchen to fill the water jug and get some ice; a lot of whiskey was being consumed as I expect you know, Diane, and that’s when you appeared like that on the landing . . . right on cue.’
‘Appeared like what?’
‘Like that! Like that!’ I cried out, ‘all spectral and filmy and grotesque. Bulbous,’ I added for good measure.
Diane inclined her head to one side and gazed at me with what really did look like genuine bewilderment. She smoked for a moment, throwing out a billowing plume into the damp air. I followed suit and lit up a cigarette, glad of the relieving jolt of pleasure in my brain and throat. ‘I’m sorry, Diane,’ I said in a calmer voice, ‘but I do not find this at all funny. You and the others may think me a bit of a buffoon, but I do have some sensitive feelings you know. Whose idea was it? Dickie’s I suppose.’
‘You do not find what funny, Richard?’ she asked.
‘You missed your calling, Diane. You should’ve been on the stage. Is that white powder on your face?’ I asked.
She ran her hand down her cheek and stared at her palm. I saw the beginnings of tears trembling on her lower eyelashes, but I could not have cared less.
‘Why are you being so rude to me?’ she whispered.
‘Look, the game’s over now. Most hilarious, I’m sure. Perhaps it’s you who should go back inside, and I’ll take myself off for a long walk. You can say bravo to Dickie Ingrams for me too, as I’m sure he’s behind it.’
‘Richard, are you feeling ill as well? You look awfully grey.’
‘Am I ill?’ I laughed out aloud and for a moment had some relief from it. ‘It’s you who are supposed to be ill. Just about as ill as a person can get, I should say!’
‘I do feel dreadful. Could I go and rest up in your spare room? I feel I can’t walk to my place alone if you’re unwilling to escort me.’
‘What on earth was it that possessed you to go along with Dickie’s joke, you wretched woman?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Richard, not the faintest.’ She threw her cigarette into the flowerbed and covered her face with her hands. ‘You’re being a nasty bully,’ she said, ‘would you please bring Celia out to see me.’
Something in the tone of her voice, the quavering weird little sound of it, made me wonder if it was at all possible that the joke had, by some clever means or other, been played on both of us. I took a step towards her as she leant on the side of the glasshouse. She sensed me coming and moved away a little, but stood her ground.
‘Do you know what everyone is doing in my house today?’ I asked quietly, as if talking to an infant.
She uncovered her face and looked at me. ‘Party, you said earlier.’
I flicked my cigarette butt onto the gravel and ground it in with the toe of my shoe. ‘Look at my suit, would you?’
‘It’s very sombre and horrid, Richard. You look like a rather shabby black beetle up to no good. I thought that earlier as I was walking behind you. I found it upsetting, but not as upsetting as this awful white shift I’m wearing.’ Suddenly Diane’s face cleared and she laughed. ‘Fancy dress! Why didn’t you say?’
I must have glowered at the woman for some time because if she was taking me for a ride, as the Americans say, I determined that at some time in the future I would have my revenge on her. ‘No, Diane, not fancy dress. Everyone in the drawing room is dressed similarly in black.’
She straightened up and wiped her cheek. ‘Oh my Good Lord! I am so sorry Richard. It’s a funeral party isn’t it?’
‘Now you’ve got it, Diane. Well done.’
‘I say, has your dear father passed away finally? I am so sorry! No wonder you are out of sorts.’
Not a single alteration occurred in her expression. Her eyes were anxious and red-rimmed and on my face; she appeared not to know in the slightest what had gone on and the role that she’d played in it. I wondered if perhaps Dickie Ingrams had fed her some type of drug before the set up. Dickie is a marvellous sportsman, no chance of ever being dull with him around, but in other aspects of life he is caddish and sometimes downright cruel, and I was pretty sure he’d be the ringleader in a prank of this magnitude. Although the crowd had pitched in to cover the expenses, Celia and I had agreed to hold the funeral party in our house, and that meant sherry and sides of ham and bread and all manner of other food and drink items supplied by us. Pickles, even. Dickie, I suspected, had chosen and paid for Diane’s coffin himself, or perhaps borrowed it.
‘Let�
�s have another cigarette, shall we, Diane. I need a little time to think. I’m sorry if I seemed snappy with you earlier, the strain, you know?’
‘Of course, Richard. I was very fond of your father.’
‘It was not my father, Diane.’
‘Oh! But someone dear to you?’
‘Someone dear to Celia more like,’ I answered, moving closer to her in order to scrutinise her expression once more.
‘Poor Celia,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so very fond of her.’
‘I know, Diane. I am constantly aware of how fond you are of my wife, and she of you.’
‘If there’s anything I can do to help . . .’ she went on.
‘As a matter of fact there just might be. Would you be willing to do the same thing for me that you did for Dickie?’
‘What do you mean, Richard?’
‘Oh, come on, Diane. I mean take your clothes off and get into my wife’s nightie and everything else. Must I spell it out for you?’
Diane straightened up and the breath she took was loud. ‘I beg your pardon? I have never even been near Dickie Ingrams, who on earth told you that?’
‘You have misunderstood me entirely, Diane. I’m sure you haven’t been near him in that way—surer than you can imagine as a matter of fact. I simply mean would you mind going back in there and lying as still as you did before and I’ll persuade the others to come and see you one last time. Then the whole thing would’ve backfired on them, you see?’
‘Go back into the house?’
I stared at her for a long moment; she was an intelligent woman normally, but one with perhaps a few too many ideas. ‘Into the spare room from whence you came,’ I explained patiently.
I recalled the moment I first saw her standing at the top of the stairs, a terrible squat ghost. I remember how repulsive I found the sight of her to be, how physical my terror was, how suddenly it seemed that I could smell the insides of my own body, organs, guts, gasses.
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