She felt a sudden desire to confide.
Burgess had sat down again. She stretched out a hand to him and he took it and patted it reassuringly.
A bit avuncular, she thought. But that’s what I need. A nice, kind, sympathetic uncle-confessor.
She stretched luxuriously and immediately regretted it as her stomach muscles proclaimed their unstretchability.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, noticing her wince.
‘Yes. Fine,’ she said. ‘Arthur, look, I feel I owe you a bit of an explanation.’
‘Don’t be silly. You owe me nothing.’
He seemed slightly perturbed.
‘All right. Perhaps I don’t. But I feel like giving you one. You can forget all about it tomorrow, if you like. I’ll probably wish you would. But tonight, well, I feel like giving it.’
She felt his hand go tense on hers and felt that while part of him wanted to sit and listen, other elements in him were urging him to leave.
‘You must have thought it a bit odd,’ she said. ‘You invite a Miss Emily Salter to dinner. The next morning you hear her addressed as Mrs. Follett. Didn’t you find it odd?’
‘Well, I suppose I did. Yes,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Though it didn’t really bother me.’
‘Ah, the attractions of a married woman became evident to you,’ she murmured.
‘No!’ he said in protest, almost in panic. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, please!’
‘Just a joke,’ she said, surprised. ‘But it’s true, Arthur. I am married. Oh yes. Really married. I’ve been married for nearly ten years. Does that surprise you? Ten years. I was just turned nineteen, in my first year at university, when I met Sterne. That was his first name, Sterne Follett. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps his mother had been frightened by an eighteenth-century novel. The name seemed a bit comic first time I heard it. But fascinating too. Intriguing somehow.’
And now the name had long lost its fascination for her. And regained nothing of its comedy in the losing. Nineteen, she heard herself repeat dreamily. I was only nineteen.
The whole story came out like this, as if she too were listening to someone else telling it. And the only piece of concrete reality left to her was Burgess’s hand, which she gripped convulsively all the time she talked.
She had met Sterne Follett at a reception after a degree-giving ceremony to which Emily had been taken by a young lecturer. The encounter had seemed accidental, but later, when she knew him better, she had begun to doubt if anything like an accident ever happened to him.
He had received an honorary doctorate that day. He was, she learned (though not from him), a rich man who had been a considerable benefactor of the university since its inception five years earlier. But it was the man himself who at the same time attracted her and made her feel gauche and inadequate. He was in the late forties of his middle age, not tall, but well built and fit looking, his hair still thick and vital, despite the distinguished shadings of grey round the temples. Everything he did was done with a certainty of rightness as unostentatious as it was unquestioning. He even discussed Emily’s university work with an expertise which made her feel the woeful inadequacy of her own knowledge.
Finally the Vice-Chancellor had come to bear him away, rescuing him from a boring student, Emily suspected. But to her amazement, before he left, Follett suggested they should continue their conversation the following day over tea in the Marlborough, the town’s premier hotel.
Her friends all diagnosed the lowest of motives.
‘Not at 4 p.m. in the Marlborough,’ she protested.
‘Don’t be naive,’ she was told. ‘He’ll have them off while you’re putting honey on your scone.’
‘Next time,’ they all said with lugubrious certainty when she reported back that all was still well. ‘He’s softening you up.’
‘Next time’ was dinner in the town’s best restaurant, famous for its menus, its wines, its expense.
It was perfect. Sterne soon dispelled her initial nervousness with the intense interest in her as an equal he seemed to display. The meal was everything reputation had forecast it would be, the wine like nothing she had ever tasted before.
When they came to leave, Emily had firmly made up her mind that anything he cared to ask of her, he could have. He deserved it. More than that, she was looking forward to it. But again nothing happened. He did not even take her back to the hotel for a brandy as had been half suggested earlier. Instead he drove straight to her hall of residence.
Disappointed, she wondered if something had gone wrong. Then he leaned across and kissed her, just once, not violently, but not chastely either, and let her out of the car.
She didn’t go to sleep for hours. She woke up, suddenly convinced that this had been the apogee, and spent the rest of the day in such a depression that her friends couldn’t make up their minds whether it definitely had or definitely hadn’t happened. But she confided in no one. Even to herself it seemed absurd to be madly in love with a man who did not even seem to want to sleep with her. Then she was called to the phone. Sterne had debated and decided. Cold-bloodedly, she was later able to guess. But not then.
A month later she was married to him. It was a quiet wedding. The only guests from her side were her father, her aunt, his sister, who had looked after them since her mother died six years earlier, and Mary who was her bridesmaid. With Sterne were his best man, Charles Dacre, who, she discovered later, was his personal accountant, the Vice-Chancellor and his wife, and a couple of business friends whose names she never recalled.
She did not go back to university, despite the Vice-Chancellor’s sincerely expressed hope that she would complete her course.
It seemed the perfect life that they began to lead together. Sterne’s business interests took him all over Europe. Emily had never travelled at all. Within two years of her marriage she had visited every European capital and much else besides.
Their intimate life together would have satisfied even the most exacting requirements of her university friends. Sterne was very good at it and Emily discovered in herself a talent she had often suspected. Only a sense of her husband’s essential self-containment even at the moment of climax fractionally marred her pleasure.
Their social life moved at a level Emily would have considered far beyond her reach a year earlier. Sterne was at home anywhere and in demand everywhere. Soon Emily became conscious of the gently insistent effort Sterne was making to prod her in the right directions, to fit her for her role of hostess in his house and guest at the tables of others. For a long time, a year or more, she was amused by it, even touched. It seemed a signal proof of Sterne’s concern for her, his desire that she should not feel out of things in this new life. Gradually, however, it became irksome. She bore with it for long after it had become unbearable. Perhaps this was a mistake. Complaints should be voiced long before they have become angry outbursts.
One evening Sterne handed her a list of guests at a luncheon party they were attending the following day. Casually he began to talk about them, reminding her of those she had already met, telling her things about those who would be new to her.
She listened for a few moments, then rose, sensing her own irritation and sensing the comparative innocuousness of the provocation.
‘I’ll have the second lesson in the morning, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m going up to bed now.’
He put the list down and rose courteously to his feet to open the door for her.
‘Good night, my dear,’ he said.
It was the courtesy which idiotically triggered off the final outburst.
It all came pouring out, first the anger, then the halfapology, then the appeal. He didn’t say a word but held the door open. She thought she saw a look of contempt flit over his face.
‘Good night, my dear,’ he said again.
She went to bed. It had been their first quarrel, she thought absurdly, and was still young enough, or old enough, to be able to laugh at the title.
They ha
d been married nearly three years. It wasn’t bad going.
It took another two years for her to admit that her husband was a stranger to her. It was small comfort to look back and think that perhaps he always had been. The discovery that he was also sleeping with a variety of other women hardly came as a shock to her any more than reading the news about a stranger in a divorce-court case. It mattered as little to her as she knew it mattered to him. It could hardly be called ‘having an affair’ with even the shallow putting-down of roots that that phrase implied.
‘You do it to be polite,’ she told him, with hardly a jeer in her voice. She had felt constrained by convention to confront him with her knowledge. He didn’t deny it any more than he had attempted to conceal it.
‘No,’ he replied after consideration. ‘I do it out of necessity.’
Which either meant he was a sexual maniac or something quite enigmatic.
‘So I decided to leave the bastard,’ said Emily, suddenly quite loudly.
Burgess, who had been listening to her voice die down and had begun to hope she was sleeping, started in his chair.
‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to talk any more.’
‘What’s the matter? You embarrassed, Arthur? A man of the world like you?’
‘Go to sleep now,’ he said.
‘Do you know how long it took me to leave him? Once I’d made up my mind finally and definitely, I mean? You’ll laugh when I tell you. Three years and a bit. Are you laughing? How’s that for decisiveness?’ she asked drowsily.
‘Don’t talk,’ he repeated.
‘You’re trying hard to shut me up, Arthur. I thought you had a sympathetic ear. But you needn’t listen. I’ll just go on talking anyway. I don’t know what happened. I was just perfect for the part, I suppose. All that training. When I shouted at him about it, it was too late. I was already word perfect. I could get by without an effort. The hostess with the mostest. When you’re gliding along like I was, three years is nothing. Zip! There she goes. And where does she go, anyway? Daddy was dead by then, two years after we got married. I’d lost sight of all my old friends, and the new lot, well, they didn’t know what was going on behind my charming smile, so why should I know about them?’
She almost nodded off this time. Burgess rose quietly to his feet. Her voice suddenly grew strong again.
‘But I’ve made it now. Made it. Almost. Just one more … and I’ve made…’
Her breathing became slow and even. Gently he switched off the light and gently went out of the room. The old door wouldn’t shut without a protesting squeak.
Emily turned slightly in her bed, just below the surface of consciousness again for a moment. She thought she heard a distant ping, like a telephone being lifted off the stand, and a voice speaking low. But if there was anything there at all it was too weak, too distant, to hinder her long, steep slide down into darkness.
She slept.
Next morning Emily felt far worse than she had done the night before. In fact when she awoke she had felt a peculiar sense of well-being, but as she stretched herself, preparatory to getting up, this feeling disappeared beneath a deluge of aches and cramps which left her weak and miserable.
Carefully she pulled the sheet down and looked in dismay at the large area of bruising round her navel. A tap on the door made her end her survey.
‘Come in,’ she said.
Suppose a big green man walked in with his head underneath his arm?
The thought was ludicrous enough to make her smile. None the less it was a comfort to see Cal raise himself lazily from the mat at the foot of the bed and amble shaggily doorwards to greet the newcomer.
It was Burgess carrying a tray replete with coffee-pot, cup, grapefruit, and toast.
‘’Morning,’ he said cheerily. ‘I’ve trespassed on your larder.’
‘Your trespass is forgiven,’ she said. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just after eight. I heard the bed creak, so I thought I’d give you a try before pushing off. I’m going to pop up to the hotel now for a shave and a bath.’
‘Oh, you might take Cal with you and send him for a gallop along the shore. He’s a creature of regular habits.’ ‘Right.’
Burgess went to the door, but hesitated there as if there was something else he wanted to say. Finally it came out, a little over-casual.
‘That chap you were with in the back bar last night. He was the one with the cat, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. Mr. Scott.’
‘I didn’t realise you knew him. I mean, you didn’t seem very friendly towards each other on the other occasions he’s appeared.’
‘No. I don’t suppose we did.’
She stopped herself from adding anything in the way of explanation, feeling a little put out at Burgess’s probing and feeling at the same time a little guilty at her resentment. He had been very kind.
‘Right, then,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll be on my way.’
‘Right,’ she said, adding as a kind of atonement: ‘And, Arthur, thanks a lot. I seem to recollect beating your ear with all my troubles last night. I’m sorry. Do me a favour. Forget them, will you?’
He nodded, and left.
She surprised herself by eating her breakfast with a good appetite and then settled back with a cigarette to take a long view of the previous night’s events.
First, she told herself, it wasn’t me he was after, which may not be flattering, but it is something of a relief. No, it was something he thought I had. What might he think I had? The only thing that comes to mind is Michael Scott’s little book. Which is absurd. Who’d want to go pretty near to murder to get hold of something its owner valued so little as to leave lying around a hotel bar without making the slightest effort to retrieve it? And if it was the book, it means that Gentleman Jim who beat me in the gut last night knew I had it. Therefore Gentleman Jim was in the hotel bar last night.
Which brings us to item two. Who is Gentleman Jim? Obviously he’s someone who can appear in the hotel bar without causing comment, but at the same time he’s some kind of professional thug.
She thought this one over for a while, a trifle surprised at her own conclusion then nodded in agreement with herself.
No one could dispose of me and my dog with such economy of effort who wasn’t well practised. Am I being vain? No, she decided, I’m not. Most people would have shied right away from the thought of tackling Cal and would have made a messier job of dealing with me. Perhaps I should be thankful he wasn’t just an enthusiastic amateur. Anyway. So what’s pro thug doing in a quiet place like this?
And item three. Who is this green man who keeps on popping up out of the ground? Was he for me or against me last night? He didn’t really have time to make his intentions clear.
She shuddered. If she had to put Gentleman Jim and the Green Man in order of preference she would find it very difficult. At least the latter hadn’t physically harmed her. Yet.
Plowman’s talk of the Green Knight and fairies and vegetation myths came back into her mind. Even now with daylight outside her window she could feel the truth of what he said. Myth, legend, fear and fantasy would find a ready breeding ground here where sea and land met in such an uneasy marriage.
She picked up her history from the bedside table and flicked through the index pages. There was nothing under ‘Gawain’ or ‘Green’, but under the heading ‘Superstition’ she found a host of references. Idly she turned to the major one.
‘Stories of villages lost beneath sand and sea abound and the elements of truth in these stories are discussed elsewhere in this book. But the common progeny of such natural disasters, whether real or legendary, appear here too. Bells that toll under water; great gnarled trees brought ashore from submarine forests on the neap tides; houses visible fathoms-deep on a clear day and the usual revenants, the bodies of the drowned, often scaly, green, decaying, bringing with them odour of fish and weed.’
Nice, thought Emily. I’m glad I found that in the morning.
She flicked over a few more pages, pausing when the name Wolsty caught her eye. It meant little to her. She had seen it on a signpost on the road between Silloth and Beckfoot. But more recently … now she remembered. That man, Scott, from his god-like elevation on that great black horse, saying coldly, impersonally, ‘Try Blitterlees or Wolsty Bank at the next tide.’
Her old anger flared briefly. To quell it, she read on.
‘And considering the ignorant and superstitious nature of the people of this area, whose lack of religion caused the authorities much concern, it is not surprising that so many fables and legends should abound, and mustard seeds of truth be swollen into huge shady trees of superstition.’
Nicely put, thought Emily approvingly. They don’t write like that any more:
‘For instance Wolsty Castle, built as a defence centre for the Abbey of Holm Cultram, served forces other than those of official religion; for in it, according to tradition, were preserved the magic books of the famous Border scholar and, by implication and reputation, wizard …’
She turned over the page.
‘… Michael Scot.’
‘Well now,’ said Emily aloud. ‘That is interesting!’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ she called, expecting to see Burgess enter. Instead Cal pushed his way in, very damp, having obviously found someone to throw his stick or having perhaps acted independently in his mistress’s absence. And behind him came the man whose name she had just read.
Absurdly, she clutched the sheet up to her throat. He stood at the door looking, for him, remarkably ill-at-ease. Cal had no such inhibitions and placed his forepaws on the bed, which creaked ominously. Forgetting her sheet, Emily pushed him off with mock annoyance.
‘Cal, a dog of your size should behave with more dignity. And you’re soaking wet!’
‘That’s my fault,’ said Scott. ‘I met him on the shore and he practically terrorised me into throwing a stick into the sea for him.’
The Castle of the Demon Page 7