Fireside Gothic

by Andrew Taylor

  That was my first mistake. Perhaps the pigs were an omen, if only I’d had the sense to see it.

  4

  At first everything was easy. I congratulated myself on my cleverness. I followed the tail lights of the car ahead and had the reassurance of other people’s headlights behind me. The road was narrow and winding. There was a good deal of surface water, which threw up spray as the cars passed through it.

  We came to a large puddle that stretched across the whole road. The cars ahead edged through it. The two I was following were both four-wheel drives, high off the road. I gave them a few seconds and then followed even more slowly in my little Honda.

  I reached the other side in safety. But because of the delay the tail lights ahead were no longer visible. Nor were the headlights behind – perhaps the other cars had turned off, rather than risk the puddle.

  By now it was completely dark. It was still raining. I drove on for half a mile. The road passed through dense woodland, a conifer plantation perhaps. There were no lights to be seen.

  I stopped at the side of the road. I turned on the phone and pressed the icon for the maps program. It began to load, then froze. I waited a moment. Nothing happened. It was then that I noticed on the top left-hand corner of the screen the words No Service.

  This was tiresome, but no more than that. If I drove on I would come to a signpost or, at the very least, a house where I could ask the way. Or the black spot would end and my phone would start working again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a road atlas in the car, but I knew I was somewhere between the A12 to the west and the North Sea to the east. The strip of land between them was relatively narrow, so I could hardly get seriously lost. I had nearly half a tank of petrol. True, I was growing hungry – I rather regretted turning up my nose at the sandwiches in the village hall – but once I was back on the A12 I would soon find a pub or café where I could stop for a snack.

  I drove off again. My world contracted to the interior of the car and the twin cones of the headlights, diagonally slashed with rain. The road narrowed to a lane. It left the wood and wound between hedges. It acquired a slight but perceptible downward gradient.

  The car lurched. And again. And again. And again.

  I swore and braked. There was a puncture on the nearside rear tyre. I had probably picked it up when I had stopped at the side of the road to try the phone.

  I pulled over, cut the engine and opened the glove compartment. There was a torch in there, though I hadn’t used it for months. I flicked the switch and, to my relief, the bulb lit.

  I switched on the hazard lights and climbed out of the car. The wind had got up in the last hour or so. It snatched the door from my hands and threw it open. A squall of rain hit my face. I tried to raise the umbrella – it was one of Beth’s, a cheap one designed for a handbag – and the wind immediately blew it inside out.

  I swore loudly. I dropped the remains of the umbrella on the floor of the car and made my way to the back. I kept an old waxed jacket in the boot. I shrugged it on – it was clammy and heavy, but it gave some protection against the weather.

  It was years since I had changed a tyre, but it was a perfectly straightforward job unless the wheel nuts were screwed on too tightly. I pulled up the base of the boot to take out the spare.

  Only then did I remember that the Honda didn’t have a spare tyre. To save space and weight, the designers had substituted a little repair kit that was supposed to provide a temporary remedy for a puncture, enough to get you to the nearest garage. I had no idea how this kit worked and I was pretty sure that trying to use it in the rain and darkness would get me nowhere.

  That left me with two options: settle down, cold and hungry, and spend the night in the car; or try to find help.

  I didn’t have much choice. At this point the road was wide enough to leave the car where it was – there was room for traffic to pass, assuming any traffic wanted to. I fastened the jacket up to my chin, locked the Honda and set off down the lane, pursued by the orange pulse of the hazard lights.

  After fifty yards or so, the road swung left. The flashing lights vanished. I was alone with the rain and the sound of my own footsteps.

  I had forgotten how dark it can be in the country. It’s never dark in London. I’ve always been a city-dweller. There were neither stars nor a moon. The torch beam shone directly in front of me, illuminating the surface of the road. It gave off such an inadequate and partial light that it had the paradoxical effect of emphasizing the darkness rather than dispelling it.

  It was also very quiet. That wasn’t something I was used to, either. I heard my footsteps and the rustle of the rain and the wind. There was another sound, a faint but continuous roar that came and went in the distance, growing steadily louder.

  The sea.

  As I turned the corner the wind leapt at me with extra force, nearly knocking me over. It was so violent, so elemental, that I stopped in my tracks and wondered whether to retreat to the car.

  It was then that I saw the light, a speck in the darkness. It was difficult to measure the distance, but it looked about a hundred yards away.

  I cupped my hands and shouted. The wind blew my words back at me. I set off towards the light, forcing myself to a stumbling run, the torchlight wavering in front of me.

  Almost at once the surface of the lane deteriorated. The tarmac gave way to what felt like mud interspersed with the occasional island of hard core. Rain soaked the lower part of my trousers. My face was wet. When I licked my lips I tasted the tang of salt.

  The sea was very close now, its rolling roar angrier and louder. That was the moment I realized that this ridiculous adventure was no longer just time-wasting and inconvenient. It was becoming increasingly unpleasant. I was even growing a little scared. This was not a night to be outside, especially not in the middle of nowhere.

  The lane ended in a gate with a stile beside it. The source of the light was somewhere beyond it. It seemed no closer than it had been before.

  I passed through the stile and into a field that sloped down towards what I assumed was the sea. The surface was too uneven for running in the dark – I didn’t want to sprain an ankle – so I slowed to a walk. The force of the wind was stronger here. It wrapped itself around me, pushing me away from the light. The grinding of the sea filled my ears.

  I heard a cry. Just for a moment – a high wordless sound, instantly swallowed by the sea. It could have been human. Or from a bird or a fox. It was a cry, that’s all, barely audible in all the racket and devoid of personality.

  The light was nearer now, a faint yellow glow. I shone the torch ahead. This time, as well as the slivers of rain, it picked out what looked like masonry. The light was to the left of it and beyond it, on the seaward side.

  I drew closer. The masonry resolved itself into the flint and rubble you see so much in old East Anglian buildings. But the closer I got, the more I suspected this wasn’t the remains of a barn. The torch played over pieces of dressed stone among the rubble and flint. I ran the beam up the side of a pier that rose up beside an arch so high above me that the torchlight gave out before it got there.

  It was a fragment of something much grander. A church or a manor house, perhaps. I followed the line of it towards the light. There were three big openings in the wall. Then there was a small, single-storey cottage embedded in the side of the ruin. It had two windows, one on either side of the door.

  The nearer window was uncurtained. On the sill was the source of the light I had followed – a hurricane lamp.

  I knocked on the door. Nothing happened. I knocked again, more loudly. I stood back to wait and accidentally nudged a covered bucket on the path by the door. The lid fell off with a metallic clatter. I smelled something rotten, something foul.

  The lantern suddenly disappeared from the windowsill. A bolt scraped back. The door opened, but only about three inches, and a strip of light made a stripe across the doorstep and touched my sodden shoes.

  A woman said, ‘Wh
o is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘My car’s broken down. Could I possibly use your phone?’

  ‘We haven’t got one.’ Her voice trembled slightly.

  It occurred to me that she might be alone in the cottage. It was a foul night and she would naturally be suspicious of a strange man turning up on her doorstep at this hour.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said again. ‘But I need to find help.’

  I couldn’t see much of her, because she had angled the lamp so it shone on me. I had the impression of dark hair and thin, pointed features. She didn’t look directly at me. She had turned her head so her face was almost in profile.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, perfectly.’ There was a trace of a foreign accent. ‘Well, actually – no. I’ve got an awful cold. Look, if you want a phone, the Mortons have got one. If you go back up to the gate, then follow the line of the hedge, there’s a footpath that goes into the bottom of the garden.’ She began to close the door. ‘There’s a gate. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Is it far?’ I said.

  ‘No. Ten minutes’ walk if you—’ she broke off. ‘Did you hear that?’

  We listened. All I heard was the rain and the wind and the restless movements of the sea.

  ‘What was it?’ I said.

  ‘I thought I heard a bell. Sorry, I must go. Goodbye.’

  Before I could reply, she closed the door. As I turned away she tilted her head to look at me and the lamplight caught her face. I thought I glimpsed a bruise or perhaps a birthmark on her left cheek.

  The bolt rattled home on the other side of the door. I waited a few seconds. She replaced the lantern on the windowsill, but this time she drew the curtain. I half-wished that I had looked through the window before knocking on the door. But there would have been something prurient about spying on her.

  I braced myself and plodded up the field, away from the cottage. It was easier than I had expected, mainly because the weather was now behind me, not in front of me. The wind and the rain made a cushion of pressure that pushed me away from the sea.

  I wondered about the woman. Probably young rather than old. Perhaps she was Polish or Czech or something – there had definitely been an intonation in her voice that wasn’t English, though in other respects her accent was rather prim and clipped. Lots of farms employed seasonal workers from other parts of Europe. She could be one of those, though it wasn’t the time of year you’d expect much casual work on a farm. Or she might be an artist. I hadn’t seen any sign of another person. She had said that ‘we’ hadn’t got a phone. But that might have been just to make me think someone else was about the place.

  The gate loomed up ahead of me. I paused by the hedge to get my bearings. I couldn’t see the cottage and the ruin beside it. The light had gone from the window, which gave me a pang, a sense of loss. There was nothing there at all now – just the darkness, the wind and the rain, and the growling sea.

  Then I heard it, too: the sound of the bell, almost swallowed up by the weather. A single note. That was all.

  5

  The Mortons’ house lay in a gentle hollow, sheltered from the weather by a belt of trees. I walked through what looked like a vegetable garden, over a leaf-strewn lawn towards the house. I headed for an outside light fixed to one corner of the building. Once I was round the corner I saw the front of the house. It was a substantial place, Edwardian perhaps or a little later, of a type you could find in the leafier suburbs of any city.

  Most windows of the main rooms faced away from the sea towards another lawn, this one bordered by a shrubbery. There were lights behind the curtains in three of the windows. A gravel drive skirted the lawn and widened in front of the house. A Volvo estate was parked outside. Beyond the house was what looked like a garage block detached from the main building.

  I went into the tiled porch and rang the bell. The door was half-glazed, with a stained-glass panel. The light was on in the hall. I stood there, shivering. It was only then, now I was out of the rain and the wind for the first time in what seemed hours, that I realized how cold and wet I was. I passed my fingers through my hair in a crude attempt to comb it. A puddle formed around my feet.

  A blurred shape approached the door. I heard the rattle of a chain – they were a suspicious lot in this part of Suffolk. The door opened a couple of inches.

  ‘Yes?’ A woman’s voice, hard and suspicious.

  I explained what had happened.

  ‘The lady over there’ – I nodded towards the sea – ‘said you might allow me to use your phone. Your landline.’

  ‘There’s a fault on the line, I’m afraid. It’s the weather.’

  I took out my mobile. I still had no signal.

  ‘Do you have a mobile I could borrow for a moment? I’d happily pay for—’

  ‘You won’t get a mobile to work here,’ she said in the same flat voice. ‘Any mobile. No coverage.’

  ‘Who is it, Jane?’

  A shape moved behind the stained glass. It was another woman, but, judging by her voice, older than the first.

  ‘He says his car has broken down,’ Jane said, turning away. ‘He wanted to use the phone, but it’s not working.’

  ‘Where is your car?’ the old woman said – speaking to me, though I still couldn’t see her, except as a shifting blur of colour in the stained glass.

  ‘It sounds absurd, but I’m not quite sure.’

  I tried the effect of a rueful smile on Jane, but her face didn’t soften. I explained about the ill-fated diversion from the A12 and the migrating pigs, about getting lost and about the puncture.

  ‘I left the car in the lane and walked down to the field by the sea at the end. I—’

  ‘It sounds to me as if you’ve left your car on Picton Lane,’ the old woman said. ‘Open the door, Jane.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jane looked back into the hall. ‘He’s … terribly wet.’

  She wasn’t worried about the water. She was worried about letting a strange man into their house.

  ‘Quite sure, dear.’

  Jane took the door off the chain and held it open. I stepped into the warmth and light of the hall. She was a sturdy woman, perhaps twenty years older than me. She was as tall as I was and considerably heavier. She glared at me. I smiled back.

  ‘Stand on the mat. Not on the carpet,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Fetch a towel, dear,’ the other woman said.

  Jane looked at me, but she did what she was told. The older woman was thin, her body bent over with something like osteoporosis. She looked as if you could knock her over with the flick of a finger or just by blowing hard at her. She was leaning on a white stick.

  ‘Would you come over here?’ she said, tapping the stick on the floor.

  ‘But the carpet? I’m very wet.’

  ‘Never mind the carpet.’ Her voice was vigorous even if her body wasn’t. ‘Come here.’

  I took three steps forward, which brought me immediately in front of her.

  ‘Do you mind if I feel your face? I’m blind.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She lifted her right hand and found first my shoulder, then my neck and finally my face. Her fingertips fluttered over it, as gentle as the touch of a cobweb.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and dropped her hand. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  There were footsteps. The door opened and Jane reappeared with a towel.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ she said. ‘He’s dripped everywhere.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m in the way. I’ll go back to my car – unless there’s somewhere else which might have a working phone?’

  ‘You can’t spend the night in your car. Jane would take you into Southwold, but our car’s out of action.’ She smiled at me. ‘Like that wretched phone. You’ll have to spend the night here.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly—’

 
‘Nonsense.’ She shut us both up. ‘If you go blundering about in this weather and then try and sleep in wet clothes in your car you’ll end up catching pneumonia. I’m not having that on my conscience.’ She gave a dry chuckle. ‘I’ve quite enough on my conscience as it is.’

  Jane said, ‘The bed in the garage is made up. I suppose he could sleep there.’

  ‘Good idea.’ The older woman smiled at me. ‘It’s not quite as primitive as it sounds. We had the loft converted into a holiday apartment.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I gave her a smile she couldn’t see. ‘I’d happily sleep in a haystack as long as it was out of the rain and the wind.’

  ‘If you’re spending the night with us, we’d better get to know each other.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Christina Morton. This is my daughter, Jane.’

  I told her my name and all three of us shook hands in the strangely formal way that Mrs Morton felt appropriate for these unusual circumstances.

  Now the decision to shelter me had been taken, Jane made the best of it. She took me through to the kitchen, which was blessedly warm with an Aga. She made me a cup of tea and hung up my waxed jacket. She raised her eyebrows when she saw the dark suit I was wearing.

  ‘Not ideal for country rambles,’ she said.

  ‘I was on my way back from a funeral,’ I said.

  ‘You’d better give me the suit to hang up. I’ll find you something of my husband’s to wear while it’s drying.’

  While I finished my tea, she went away for a moment. She came back with an old pair of jeans and a jersey, together with a pair of socks. She held up the jeans in front of me, narrowing her eyes like a shop assistant.

  ‘They’ll do. David was larger than you, but I daresay you won’t mind that.’

  She made a hot-water bottle to air the bed and took me to the apartment. On our way out, we passed through a lobby beside the kitchen, with rows of clothes and boots. She picked out a pair of wellingtons and an elderly raincoat that she said had belonged to her father.

  A side door led from the lobby to the back of the garage block on the other side of a yard. A flight of outside steps led up to the apartment above. It was small, with sloping ceilings. Most of the space was taken up by a sitting room lit by a pair of dormer windows. Beyond it was a bedroom, just large enough for a double bed, with an en suite shower room and a lavatory. The air was cold and a little damp.