Devil's Work

by Margaret Yorke

  There had been very little new building in the village, and no council development for many years. Before the war, many of the cottages were the homes of farm workers; now, with mechanisation, and with harvesting increasingly done by contract, a handful of workers managed the land, and most of the original labourers’ cottages had been renovated. Some were occupied by couples where both husband and wife worked outside the village; some were used only at weekends; and a few, near the church – which shared its vicar with three other parishes – were owned by retired couples. These people were jealous of their rural peace and anxious to safeguard it, unlike the older village folk who could no longer cash their pensions or do their shopping close to home.

  Children from the village now went to school in High Holtbury.

  Daphne drove to the Manor in her Mini and had an enjoyable evening. When she reached home, it was half-past eleven. She saw that the bedroom light was on. Alan was probably reading, the funny old thing, she thought. All she ever read was the newspaper.

  Before going to bed, she went into all the downstairs rooms to draw back the curtains. It was a chore less for the morning, though Alan didn’t approve of her doing it during the winter for he said it wasted the warmth. In his study, on a table by his chair, were two books. The title of the top one caught her eye: Problems of Death. It must be a thriller, she thought, picking it up and glancing idly at it. An enquiry into the aftermath of bereavement, she read in the blurb, and saw that it came from Berbridge Central Library. The second book was about neuroses.

  What on earth was he doing, reading such things? And he’d borrowed it from Berbridge, not from the Stowburgh branch library he normally used.

  He wasn’t ill, was he? Worrying about her, if he should die? She’d know, wouldn’t she, if anything was really wrong with him? He had been rather subdued lately, it was true, but he’d eaten all his dinner this evening – every bit of the cottage pie and green beans from the freezer, followed by stewed plums, also from the garden and frozen.

  Always direct, Daphne challenged him when she went into the bedroom and saw him, as she expected, sitting up in bed with a volume of poetry.

  ‘Bit morbid, aren’t you, Alan, reading those gloomy books from the library?’ she said. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  Alan lowered the works of Walter de la Mare on to his stomach and looked at her over his spectacles.

  ‘Not really, dear,’ he said. ‘I was talking to someone the other day who hadn’t got over their—er—their wife’s rather sudden death. Couldn’t face it. I happened to be in the library checking something, and saw those books. Thought they might help.’

  He had to go to Berbridge sometimes, Daphne knew, on Biggs and Coopers’ business. Why not to the library? She did not query that.

  ‘Oh – you’ve got them for your friend?’

  ‘Yes—yes,’ agreed Alan eagerly. How stupid of him to leave them where she’d see them, he thought.

  ‘Who is it?’ Daphne asked. ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘No, dear. No one at Biggs and Cooper. Someone I met quite by chance,’ said Alan truthfully. ‘Er—Larry Walsh,’ he added.

  ‘How old is he?’ asked Daphne.

  ‘Oh, not old at all – about twenty-nine or thirty,’ said Alan, guessing. ‘It was a motor accident,’ he added.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Daphne. ‘I suppose he’s having trouble sleeping.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Alan. ‘He—er—he has to take pills.’ He supposed sleeplessness was one of Louise’s problems; he didn’t really know. ‘He gets these attacks of giddiness when he’s out.’

  ‘Giddiness?’

  ‘Yes. As if he’s going to faint,’ said Alan, various conflicting emotions of his own making him loquacious. ‘Clings to the fence – has trouble getting to work, in fact. He’s had a lot of time off. He hates going out at all.’

  ‘Shock can do funny things,’ said Daphne. ‘It sounds a bit like agoraphobia to me. I think that can be brought on by shock, or something like a bad illness.’

  ‘Agoraphobia? I thought that was when you couldn’t walk across a field,’ said Alan.

  ‘Well – it’s fear of open spaces, isn’t it?’ said Daphne. ‘I think it boils down to finding it hard to face life, really. Or parts of life. Not being able to meet people – cope with crowds. Emily Peters’ sister had it.’ Emily was a golfing friend, wife of a dentist living in High Holtbury. ‘She had psychiatric treatment. I don’t know if she was cured. It’s horrible, I believe; the person feels really ill.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with—er—Larry,’ said Alan slowly.

  ‘I hope you can help him,’ Daphne said. ‘It’s like you to bother. You are a nice old thing, Alan.’

  She felt very relieved to think the trouble was someone else’s, and not his.

  There were several books in the library which referred to agoraphobia. After doing his letters the next morning, Alan studied them, looking the subject up in the indexes and checking every reference. He became engrossed, and when he found one writer stating that sufferers could often drive themselves in cars where they could not go on foot, he felt sure that Daphne had found the answer to what was wrong with Louise. Working in a hospital as she did, she had a lot of medical knowledge.

  One afternoon, a few days later, when he had had time to read quite a lot about it, he returned to the flat a little earlier than usual in the afternoon. He knew Louise had shopping to do that day; they had arranged to go to the supermarket after collecting Tessa.

  Now he proposed that she should go shopping alone. She’d already delivered and collected Tessa on her own several times; it was time to be more adventurous. He’d walk on ahead, he said, and wait for her outside the supermarket. Then they’d go to the school together.

  Louise agreed, though she seemed a little surprised at his suggestion.

  Alan stood waiting by the wide entrance to the supermarket and watched for the car to appear. She manoeuvred it easily into a parking space near where he stood. He resisted the impulse to go over and open the door for her, for that would defeat the object of his experiment.

  She smiled at him and waved. Then she got out of the car and locked the door. She turned to cross the wide pavement. Within two yards her whole demeanour had altered; she turned pale and stood still, hugging her arms to her body.

  Alan was beside her at once, holding her arm.

  ‘Breathe deeply,’ he instructed. ‘Just wait. You’re having a panic. Hang on, it’ll pass in a minute.’ He’d given her much the same advice before, in this same place, without the knowledge he had now; that time, it had been just common sense. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added. ‘No one’s looking. You’ll be all right in a minute. Breathe deeply.’

  Louise obeyed. After a few minutes her breathing steadied and her colour came back, but her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh damn, damn, damn,’ she said.

  Alan pressed her arm.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said again. ‘Let’s do your shopping and then I’ll tell you why this is happening to you.’

  She seemed calm in the shop, but, not wanting to risk another attack, he kept close to her. He noticed she went to the check-out point nearest the door, confirming what he had read about agoraphobes feeling trapped and needing, in theatres or cinemas, if they managed to go to them at all, to sit by the aisle. He had thought that was an indication of claustrophobia, but in fact there seemed to be similarities between the two conditions. He knew that the affliction was a vast and complex subject, and was sure that symptoms and patients must vary immensely, but he had learned enough to feel hopeful that merely reading about it might help Louise. She had not, after all, suffered from the illness for very long, unlike many victims who endured their disability for years.

  She drove the car to the school. They were early, and parked near the tree where Louise stood when she managed to walk there alone.

  Alan turned in his seat to face her. Now he never thought her plain, as he had at first; he l
onged to banish forever the anxious expression she so often wore. Neither, since that one occasion, had made a physical move towards the other, for both were shaken by what had happened. Alan knew that when he kissed her again it would be in no platonic fashion and a wide sea of hazard would open before them; new to that sort of intrigue, he was nervous of starting upon it, and unsure of how they would manage. He was afraid, too, of a rebuff, unaware of how deeply Louise had been stirred by the strength of her own response.

  ‘What do you know about agoraphobia?’ Alan asked her now.

  ‘Not much,’ said Louise. ‘It means fear of open spaces, doesn’t it? Why?’

  ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ said Alan. ‘Agora is the Greek word for market. Phobia, of course, means fear. So it really means fear of the market-place – fear of going out, fear of crowds, fear of leaving the safety of home. It can be brought on by shock,’ he added. ‘Like a bereavement.’

  Louise stared at him.

  ‘I think it’s what’s wrong with you,’ he said. ‘People suffering from it can get dizzy, sometimes faint, feel rooted to the spot. They get palpitations. They walk along close to fences and buildings, away from the kerb edge on pavements. Very often they’re all right in cars. I’ve got some books about it from the library, and I found a paperback which includes it in other problems about spiders and things. You’d better read some of them yourself, Louise. See if what they say describes how you feel.’

  ‘Can it be cured?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Of course it can,’ said Alan robustly, although he had read enough to know that relief might not be easily or quickly obtained. Confidence, he felt, was the basic remedy. ‘You just need some help,’ he added. ‘And I’m here to give it to you.’

  She should really go to her doctor, he supposed; but she’d already done that, and had received only scant sympathy and tranquillisers. Alan thought that some reading could do no harm and why not see if he could help her? If he failed, she was no worse off; already and without proper knowledge of what might be wrong, she had more confidence than when they first met.

  When he found a job, he wouldn’t have time.

  At the prospect of no longer seeing Louise every day, Alan felt a sudden chill. He looked at her pale, thin face. She was gazing at the steering wheel, plucking at it with her ungloved hand. There was a red scar on the back of it. He put out a finger and touched it gently.

  ‘What’s that? Did you burn yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘Mm. Stupid clot, aren’t I? I knocked against the oven shelf getting something out.’ She turned her hand over and slipped it into his warm, dry palm. ‘Alan, if you’re right, then I’m not going mad. People who are afraid of spiders, for instance, aren’t mad, are they? They’ve just got a comp’It’s a phobia,’ Alan corrected. ‘And of course you’re not mad. What an idea!’ He tightened his hand round hers, feeling the little bones.

  ‘I’d been so afraid I was losing my mind,’ Louise said. ‘I’ve tried so hard to get over it—force myself to go out. But I was getting worse and worse. Till you came along, that is. I’ve been so much better since then. But then today—look what happened just now. It was awful.’

  ‘I know,’ said Alan. ‘But one of the books I’ve been reading says that people with most phobias go into a sort of panic. It’s what you call your gremlins. Say it’s spiders you don’t like – you mentioned them yourself. You know how they often appear in the bath, they come up the drain.’ There were a lot of spiders at Cherry Cottage; they lived in the thatch. Pauline had never cared for them and Alan had often rescued them from the bath in response to her cries. He thought it unlucky to kill them.

  Louise agreed that spiders did seem to enjoy looking for water in bath outlets.

  ‘Well then – you’re a spider hater, we’ll say, so every time you go into the bathroom you’re expecting to see one, and you’re tense and alarmed in advance. So when you do see the spider, you get into a panic. But if you just hung on for a minute, breathed deeply and let the panic – or gremlins – pass, you could probably cope. You could run the spider out with some water, for instance, or trap it in a glass, put some paper over the end and throw it out of the window. You’re much bigger than it, after all, and I don’t think there are many tarantulas in this country.’

  They both laughed at this.

  ‘And you think agoraphobia can be tackled like spiders?’ said Louise.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Alan. ‘I bet, today, you subconsciously thought as you got out of the car, “Oh dear, now I’ve got to cross the pavement and I felt funny here the other day,” so that in a way you were expecting trouble.’

  ‘I wondered why you hadn’t come up to the car,’ Louise admitted. ‘I was wishing you had. But now I see you did it on purpose, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ He pressed her hand. ‘The children are coming out,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you some of these books and I’ll see what else I can find out about it. Then we’ll talk about what we can do. Maybe you should see what your doctor says, but I can’t see that delaying for a bit will make much difference.’

  He went back to tea with them. He always did that now. Louise had made a chocolate cake. Afterwards, until it was time for Alan to go home, they played Ludo.

  Mrs Cox had seen them all come in together. At least, she had seen the legs passing her basement window. She watched for them now, every day, her chair pulled comfortably forward: the grey worsted legs with the well-shined black shoes; the long black boots; and the little white socks with the brown zip ankle boots below. The two adult pairs of legs went in and out too often without the third pair: each afternoon the man arrived alone and was up there in that flat with Louise before they both went to the school. There was only one meaning to that. Louise was a fast woman, and a stupid one, too, in Mrs Cox’s opinion; men were only after one thing, like the young man in the boat so long ago, and it was foolish, as well as wicked, to let them turn your head, as Grace’s mother, and now Louise, had done. Tessa, if not prevented, would do it too, in time.

  Mrs Cox had a baby-sitting appointment that night at the Duncans’ house, just round the corner in Shippham Avenue. Mr Duncan fetched her as usual, though it was no distance at all to walk. As she sat in the well-furnished sitting-room of Beech House, while the baby slept upstairs, Mrs Cox thought about what must be done. While she reflected, she knitted a small cardigan destined for the Duncans’ baby, now six months old.

  The baby began to cry at half-past nine. He did not stop quickly, so after a while Mrs Cox went up to see what was wrong; she never went at once; they often dropped off again if you left them. The child was probably teething.

  Mrs Cox spoke briskly to the infant and changed his wet nappy. Then she picked up the bottle of sedative medicine used by the mother if the child refused to settle, and left handy in case it was needed. Mrs Cox poured out the requisite dose and the baby drank it down without demur. It was pleasant to take, it seemed, though it took a little time to work. Mrs Cox, however, never pandered to any baby that was in her care. She tucked the child firmly back into his cot and left the room. There were a few small whimpers, but soon there was silence. The mixture would be effective with an older child, too, if a large enough dose was given, and it could be bought over the counter at any chemist’s. Reinforced with a sleeping pill or two, to induce quicker action, and mixed with cocoa and plenty of sugar, it would be easy to get Tessa to swallow it. Her wicked mother deserved to suffer, and a chance would come, as it had with Grace. Grace, the sweet innocent child, had been protected for ever from sin; Tessa should be made safe too.

  In Mrs Cox’s medicine cupboard, high on the bathroom wall, was a big bottle half-full of chloral hydrate prescribed for Mavis, who had often been nervy, restless and disturbed. It had had a magic effect, swiftly ensuring profound sleep for many hours. There was also a bottle of large white sleeping tablets which Mavis had taken regularly.

  Mrs Cox never took drugs herself, but she’d kept these after
Mavis died, for you never knew what you might one day need. A mixture might be best for Tessa.

  8

  While Mrs Cox was baby-sitting round the corner, Louise settled down with the books which Alan had left. The radio was tuned to a classical concert, and with Mozart and Brahms forming a soothing background, she discovered her symptoms described with frightening accuracy. Instant relief swept over her as she read on; she was not insane, nor was she simply feeble. She had a genuine illness.

  There were various cures, she learned, including group therapy and analysis, even the use of tape recordings which, it seemed, could be quietly played to provide encouragement as the sufferer undertook an expedition beyond the safe bounds of home. Louise read about the onset of panic she knew so well and that Alan had mentioned. Accept it and let it pass, the book advised, just as he had said. Already, since meeting Alan and without considering his theory, she was feeling better. Her own improvement was reflected in Tessa, who was eating more and had lately earned one gold and two silver stars at school.

  She hadn’t made the school journey alone for some time now; she was much too young for the burden of supporting her mother, as she had done until Alan came into their lives.

  Louise thought back to her own childhood and the hotel in Wales with her small attic room. She had been frightened of shadows cast by the beams which crossed it. She was terrified when, one night, a bat flew in and swooped over her bed. She hid under the bedclothes, screaming, but no one heard her and her screams turned to sobs until at last she fell asleep, exhausted. In the morning, the bat had gone.