‘Hello?’
‘Oh. He’s left it behind, then?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He’s left it … it’s Melody again, Mary.’
‘Oh.’
Well, who the hell did you think it was? The Queen Mother?
‘I guess he’s left it behind.’
‘Yes. It was on the table.’
‘Right. Is he due back at any point?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, could you give him a message for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you.’
Another silence.
‘Could you tell him,’ I ask, ‘that I’ve decided not to stay up in London? You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve got everything done already.’
‘Oh yes?’
I don’t mention Hilary. I’ve decided not to till I can see him face-to-face and there’s no point telling her. It’s too extraordinary a story to waste on a phone call.
‘Yeah.’ I attempt once more to engage her interest. ‘It’s great shopping up there. I’ve had a great time. I’ve bought some fabulous things.’
Now, any normal woman would, at this point, want to know what. Mary, instead, says: ‘Oh yes?’
‘So anyways, I thought I’d jump on the four forty-eight. Can you ask him to come pick me up?’
‘If I see him.’
‘Well, where is he? Is he somewhere I can call him?’
‘I think he went out,’ she says, ‘to see Roly Cruikshank.’
Oh, yes, he did, didn’t he?
‘Oh, right. Have you got the number there?’
‘No.’
‘Mary, I’m running out of money. Can you call him, please, at Roly’s, and let him know? I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’
She sounds like she’s staring out of the window. ‘Of course,’ she replies vaguely.
‘The train gets in to Moreton just after six.’
‘Yes.’
‘If you could let him know. Please?’
‘Have a nice trip,’ she says.
‘Thanks. I’ll see you later.’
‘Thank you for calling,’ she says. ‘Goodbye.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Stranded
He’s a nice guy, my cab driver. A man called Matthew Baker. There’s a Gloucestershire type that’s got a casual dignity about them that really warms your cockles. Mind, I think I’d probably have fallen in love with a one-armed jelly-wrestler after ninety minutes on Moreton station. It’s not come as a hundred per cent surprise to me, after the tone of my exchange with Mary, but there’s been no sign of Rufus, and every phone I have tried – house, office, and, with sinking heart, the abandoned cellphone – rings out with an unfriendly finality. By the time I’ve tracked down the business cards taped to the inside of the firmly locked ticket office door, located an eye-pencil at the bottom of my bag and scribbled the numbers on the back of my hand, called three men with garages who said they only picked up personal friends of their wives at three weeks’ notice, finally found Matthew and waited, huddled on a bench that’s only half-sheltered by the roof overhang of the padlocked waiting room, until he got finished with his pickup over at Kiftsgate, I’m dripping, and so are my new clothes, and I’m as glad to see him as I would have been if he’d been Keanu Reeves come sauntering out of the sea in a skin-tight rubber T-shirt.
‘You’re soaking,’ he says, observantly.
‘That’ll be because it’s raining,’ I tell him.
‘It does that,’ he informs me. ‘Don’t suppose you’re used to a lot of rain where you come from.’
‘Oh, no, we get rain. Just not twenty-four/seven. It stops, sometimes, back home.’
‘Sometimes,’ he says gravely, ‘it stops here too. You can go … ooh … two, three days with nothing but sunshine come June, July.’
He leads me to an old but lovingly maintained Ford Escort. The seats are protected by a sturdy layer of shrink-wrap plastic, and the interior smells strongly of pine air freshener. There is one of those cardboard things in the shape of a Christmas tree dangling from the rear-view mirror. Combined with the smell of my wet shoes, wet hair and sodden clothes, it produces a fug so powerful that I have surreptitiously to wind the window down and lean my face into the damp breeze in order to stop myself from chundering.
‘Bourton Allhallows, was it?’
‘Got it in one, Matt. You’ve just about saved my life, I reckon.’
‘Someone forget to come and pick you up, did they?’
‘Something like that, yeah. And now no one’s answering the phone. The lines must be down or something.’
‘That,’ he says, looking to left and right as he waits to pull out on to the main road, ‘sounds like the beginning of one of them old black-and-white horror movies.’
I shiver, but from cold and dampness rather than anything else. ‘Oh, don’t. Don’t get me started.’
‘So what you doing down there? Staying with the family?’
‘No. Worse than that. I’ve married one of them.’
I see him glance at me, interestedly, in the mirror.
‘Ah, so you’re the one we’ve been hearing about.’
‘All good, I assume,’ I half-joke.
A fractional pause. Then his natural politeness kicks in. ‘Of course … nothing you need to worry yourself about. Mostly speculation.’
‘I’m sort of getting used to that,’ I say.
‘Give it twenty, twenty-five years and they’ll be treating you like a local.’
I tuck my hands between my knees in an effort to warm them up. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘So what do you make of your new home, then?’
‘It’s … interesting,’ I say.
Matthew laughs. ‘I see you’ve got your diplomatic skills sorted out.’
We’re passing through a darkened Moreton-in-Marsh. When it looked like I wasn’t going to have any luck getting a cab I had thought of walking up into town for warmth and company, but it’s all too grimly evident that, out of tourist season, no one keeps their business open longer than they have to. The main street is eerily empty: not even the usual gaggle of teens gathered on a bench somewhere. The tea shops have given up on the crumpet trade for the day. Only the Bell and the Black Bear are open, in a desultory fashion.
‘I’ll tell you something for free,’ says Matthew, ‘I don’t envy you.’
‘Really?’
‘What? Go and live in that mouldy old pile? Not for all the tea in China.’
I sit forward. ‘You know what, Matthew?’
‘What’s that?’
‘If you didn’t have them on the steering wheel, I’d be shaking you by the hand right now.’
‘Why’s that, then?’
‘Do you know, you’re the first person who’s said anything like that to me since I got here.’
‘Sorry if I’ve said anything out of place,’ he says.
‘No. The opposite. I was beginning to think I must be mad, or something, the way they all talk. Every time somebody opens their mouth and talks about that place, it’s the way people talk about bits of the True Cross or something?’
‘Well, you do get some odd people …’
‘Yes, but it’s almost like a religion. You know the word I hear most often in relation to Bourton Allhallows? Heaven. Do you get it? I don’t.’
‘Hell, in my book.’
‘I mean, seriously.’
‘Creepy sort of place as well. I should think there’s people been done away with up there and nobody any the wiser.’
‘And some.’
We come over the crest, and Bourton is laid out below us in moonlight that filters through a break in the cloud cover. In this light, in the distance, it looks spookier than I’ve ever seen it. Great clods of it lie in utter darkness, shadowed by the wings. The moat is black and oily, and laps against the lower walls as though it wants to swallow them whole. Blank windows stare, empty like the eyes of a psychopath, at us as we approach.
‘There aren’t any lights on,’ says Matthew.
‘Probably just looks like it. You know what those windows are like.’
‘Are you sure there’s someone at home?’
‘Yeah. No-one said anything about going out.’
He shrugs. ‘Great big cave of a house. I don’t suppose you bump into each other all that often.’
‘You’d be surprised. The family generally live in four rooms, apart from their bedrooms. You trip over them all the time.’
He shakes his head in amazement. ‘Doesn’t make sense. All that space, and you’re more overcrowded than in a council house.’
‘Beats me too. But there you go.’
We get closer. The house really does look dark. I scan the frontage for a chink of light, but nothing shows. I know Rufus is out – or I guess he is. But the family must be scattered about the place somewhere. If we were approaching from the back, the windows would probably be lit up like the fleet, but from this angle the house looks almost derelict.
Matthew pulls into the yard, switches off the engine and looks up at the lowering edifice. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, yeah. No worries,’ I tell him.
‘Do you want me to wait till you’re in, at least?’
I’m halfway out of the car, bent double to hook the bags off the back seat. ‘That’s really kind, Matthew, but you don’t need to.’
‘You got a key?’
‘Left it inside.’
‘Oh, well, then. I’ll definitely wait.’
I shake my head. ‘There’ll be my grandmother-in-law and her nurse, if there’s no-one else. You go on. You must want to get home. You’ve saved my life already. What do I owe you?’
Once more, he glances up at the house. ‘That’s eight pounds, my love.’
I give him my last tenner. I forgot to go to the ATM, I was in such a rush to get the train.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ he says.
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Are you sure? About me not waiting? You’re a long way from anywhere. I wouldn’t like to leave you stranded.’
‘Stop it,’ I say firmly. ‘You’re starting to sound like one of those movies again. I don’t want you giving me the heebie-jeebies.’
‘Well, if you’re—’
‘I am. Thank you.’
He shrugs again. Sparks up the engine. ‘All right then. You have a nice night.’
‘You too,’ I call. Stand in the headlights and wave as he backs up and turns around.
Then once he’s beeped the horn and taken off up the drive, I pick up my bags and walk towards the front door.
Chapter Thirty
The Fortress
When the sound of Matthew’s engine dies as he crests the hill and enters the woods, the remoteness of Bourton Allhallows becomes crashingly evident. There’s the drip of a plaintive gutter, the crackle and fssh of wind in conifers, the sludgy, sulky movement of water in the moat. But there are no comforting background noises, no sounds that help me know that I haven’t just dropped off the edge of the world.
My footsteps sound out like an intrusion as I cross the gravel. Now I’m alone I feel vulnerable, as though hidden enemies watch and wait for their moment. I can feel their eyes on me: veiled figures hidden by foliage, crouched among shadows, regarding me with old, old eyes. I am not wanted here, a creature of the new world, disruptor, cranky-voiced invader: with my bright colours, my lanky gait, my unwitting flouting of a million unwritten rules. Mist rises off the surface of the moat, drifts across the water-meadow. I step up my pace, hear my footsteps change as they move on to flagstones, put my hand on the great iron handle, try to turn it.
It holds, solid as though carved from the door itself. I lay down the bags, try again with the full force of both hands, but without success. The door is locked.
A sigh behind me. I jerk to look over my shoulder. The courtyard is empty.
Get a grip.
A bell sits to the right of the door, set in the stonework: one of those old-fashioned ceramic handles attached to a wire that runs all the way to the heart of the house, where a deep-toned brass elephant bell, a souvenir of the Raj, hangs on a pivot. I grasp the handle, haul back against it with all my weight, hear the eerie dong-dong-dong echo through corridors and walls, up desolate staircases, and die away, soaked up by drapes and panels. Then I turn my back to the door, lean against it, for I would rather know what’s coming towards me silently across the gravel, and wait.
Nothing stirs within. The house, accustomed for centuries to repelling invaders, sits, broods, awaits my next move.
It’s cold. It feels as though the air in this courtyard has been imported direct from the Arctic. I wait for five minutes, hands tucked inside my sleeves like a Mandarin, but there is no welcome sound of approaching footsteps.
Just silence.
Then I try again, though I know that if no-one has responded the first time, they are unlikely to do so to a second. Again: dong-dong-dong, then nothing.
I consider my choices. I don’t really have any.
Damn you, Rufus. Why did you bring me to this place?
I don’t understand it. It isn’t possible that every member of the family has gone out. In the weeks I’ve been here, nothing of the sort has ever happened. There have been comings and goings, of course, but Beatrice, at the very least, is too old and too gaga to go anywhere much beyond the front step. I leave my shopping bags by the front door and take myself nervously off towards the alleyway that runs between the house and the offices towards the topiary garden.
The house breathes beside me. I pause at the doorway, peer into the gloom. Light barely reaches here, and the path turns the corner of the house before it lets out again. Going in will be like plunging into a cellar. The temptation is to bolt down it, get the ordeal over as quickly as possible, but the paving is a mass of moss and lichen, and my leather-soled town shoes have no grip. I’ll have to walk it, feel my way slowly, make certain of each step before I put my weight on it.
Into the dark. Three steps in, and it wraps around me: sodden and grasping, the temperature that of a place that never sees the sun. Before: blackness. Behind: the promise that some figure might block out the light. I edge my way along the house wall, back against it, hand over hand, prickling hairs on the back of my neck, hearing only the sound of my own breaths.
Maybe I should go back. Maybe I should sit on the doorstep and wait.
And no-one will come.
My foot sinks into something deep and slippery, ripping the ground out from beneath me. Going down, I grab and clutch at the wall, scrape skin, fail to save myself. Flounder and bang my head. Damn it, damn it, damn it. The ground is soaking wet, my jeans drenched. I crouch, a hand on each wall, see stars, swear under my breath.
Hear another sigh.
Oh God.
‘Who’s there?’
No-one answers. Of course they don’t.
Sick, sick fear now. Not something you can control. Not a sensation that comes from reason. Somehow I pull myself to my feet and find myself frozen against the wall. Go forward?
I can’t see. I can’t see what’s there.
Back, then …
There could be anything.
Breathe. Just breathe.
My mouth is open. I pull my lips together and swallow. Concentrate on breathing in, out, through my nose.
Eventually get my heartbeat under control. My blood still races, but the flutter dies back. Get a grip, Mel.
I unstick my feet, move forward. Pass the office window, the tongue-and-groove door. My hand touches a drainpipe. Greasy, wet, icy cold. But manageable. I slide round it. Halfway, now. Something drips on to my shoulder. I shake myself like a dog to get it off, slide forward.
White painted door of the gents’ toilet. Something rustles inside.
Rats. It’s rats, or some other wildlife in out of the rain. It won’t be anything bigger. Just go past.
Another door: the ladies. Almost there
now.
A sudden flurry of wings at the far end. Something – one of the doves, perhaps, that roost on the front elevation of the house – taking off and resettling somewhere else.
Yes, but something disturbed it.
I cover the last ten metres at a stumbling, sliding run. Burst out into the moonlit garden with a combined rush of relief and terror. My flight mechanism is well and truly primed now. Stork-like legs carry me across the garden at a speed I hadn’t known myself capable of, dodging round the topiaries without allowing myself to register what might be hiding behind them. I lob myself against the garden door, crash through into the backyard and bolt towards the kitchen door.
Not a light on this side of the house, either. I know before I even try it that the door will be locked.
Where are they? Where the hell are they?
The big pines sough above my head.
Where are they?
There is no bell on this side of the house. Tradespeople are supposed to use their hands and wait, I guess: not disturb the residents. I hammer on the door with both fists, shout at the top of my voice: ‘Hello? Is there anybody there? Somebody! Let me in!’
The house laughs at me. I can hear it. I can feel it, mocking me: the scorn of bricks and mortar.
‘Where the hell are you! Somebody! For God’s sake, let me in!’
Nobody comes. These hateful people: they’ve left me here, out here in the dark. They want me to know.
This is a lonely, threatening place. The drive leads, silver in moonlight, through an avenue of ancient yews, winter foliage dripping, mysterious ticks and clicks as wood and leaf catch the breeze. I don’t want to be alone here. Too many spirits, too much history.
In the dark, a figure steps out on to the road in front of me, turns and walks away. It wears a long, black hooded cloak, like a monk or a highwayman, or someone dressed up for Hallowe’en, and moves with a smooth, thoughtful tread. I don’t know who it is. Frankly, I don’t care.
‘Hello!’ I call.
He doesn’t respond. Just carries on walking, slowly, deliberately, towards the stable block.
I try again. ‘Hello? Can you help me? I seem to have got locked out.’
Simply Heaven Page 19