Antonia glanced away. She pulled her pink dressing gown more tightly around her. ‘I’ll make the coffee,’ she said. Her voice was strained and uncertain.
Paul cleared his throat. ‘Clare, darling, I have brought you back here for your own good. It is important you are with people who love you and want the best for you at this time.’
‘At what time? What do you mean?’
‘While you get better.’
‘Better?’ Clare stood up angrily. ‘Paul, there is nothing wrong with me!’
‘I’m afraid there is, darling. Please, don’t be foolish about this. It will be so much easier if you cooperate.’
‘Cooperate? By doing what? Selling Duncairn? That is what this is all about, isn’t it? You want me to sell up and get you out of trouble in the City!’
Paul raised his hands in exasperation. ‘You see?’ He turned to his father-in-law. ‘She doesn’t even recognise her problems. Archie, Antonia, you have to help me help her. Her sanity depends on it!’
‘Paul dear, are you sure you know what you are saying?’ Antonia stood up uncomfortably. She walked over to Clare and awkwardly she put her arms round her daughter’s shoulders.
‘Quite sure.’ Paul’s face was a picture of concern.
‘There is nothing wrong with me!’ Clare moved away from her mother, irritated. ‘This is crazy! What are you going to do?’ Her voice rose in panic.
‘Help you, darling. Help you to get rid of the nightmares, the spirits, all the unhappiness which is ruining your life. Make you happy again.’ Paul fixed his eyes on her face. ‘That’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘Everyone has nightmares, Paul, and a lot of people meditate. It doesn’t mean they need to see a psychiatrist! I don’t need help. I’m fine. I just want some peace. I don’t want to live with you any more.’ Her head was throbbing dully, and she was dizzy with lack of sleep.
‘No one is talking about psychiatrists, Clare darling, and you can live with us, here.’ Antonia had pushed her hands deep into her dressing-gown pockets. ‘We’ll take care of you while Paul sorts everything out. You musn’t worry.’
‘Geoff is going to come up to talk to you, Clare. He can help you. He knows about these things.’ Paul gave her a paternal smile.
Clare turned on him. ‘Geoff? I don’t want to see Geoff! With his platitudes, and his holier-than-thou interference. I refuse to see him! In fact I won’t be here because I am leaving straight after breakfast.’
‘You see?’ Paul said in an undertone. ‘You see what I mean?’ He glanced at Archie. ‘An almost pathological fear of the Church. Darling.’ He turned back to Clare. ‘Geoff can help you.’
‘Like hell he can!’ Clare stood up and moved purposefully towards the door. ‘I don’t think I am even staying for breakfast. I’m leaving now. May I have the key to the front door?’
‘No.’ Paul moved very fast. He reached the kitchen door before her and stood with his back to it. ‘You’re not going anywhere. You will stay here till Geoff arrives.’
‘And how are you going to stop me going?’ Clare was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor. She had gone white. She was fighting back little waves of panic. This could not be happening.
‘I’ll lock you up if necessary, Clare.’ Paul folded his arms. ‘Please be sensible. There is no need for any of this.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’ Clare glanced wildly from her mother to her step-father and back. ‘Are you going to stand there and let him threaten me like this?’
‘Clare, darling,’ Antonia cried. ‘We love you, you must believe that –’
‘And so we have to do what is best for you.’ Archie finished for her. ‘Be a good girl and do as your husband says.’ He moved uncomfortably over to the Aga and took the boiling kettle off the heat.
‘Sit down, Clare.’ Paul stepped away from the door. He pulled out a chair for her.
Clare swallowed her fury. Meekly she sat down but her mind was working furiously. She could understand Archie believing anything of her – Paul must have found it easy to win him over, but her mother …! She glanced at Antonia’s face where the grief and uncertainty were plain.
No one but Archie ate the oatcakes and honey and the pile of toast which Antonia produced for breakfast. Clare touched nothing. Paul merely drank two cups of coffee, then he stood up.
‘For your own safety we have decided you must stay indoors, Clare. Once Geoff has arrived he will tell us what must be done to help you. Archie says he will walk Casta with the other dogs, so you needn’t worry about her. The outer doors of the house are all locked, and even if you got outside you would find all the cars locked too, so, please, let’s keep this as civilised as possible and not make a fuss.’
‘You intend to keep me here as a prisoner!’ Clare stared at him.
‘Rubbish. We’d just like you to stay indoors until you are recovered. Just as if you had had flu or something –’
‘But I haven’t had flu!’ Clare shook her head desperately. ‘Just what have you told them is wrong with me, Paul? Nightmares? That’s hardly grounds for locking me up!’ Her hands were shaking. Desperately she tried to keep her voice steady.
Paul smiled. ‘I’ve merely told them the truth, darling. No more and no less. Now, if you will excuse me, I must make some phone calls to London. If I could use your study, Archie?’
As soon as he had gone Clare leaped to her feet. ‘Mummy! Archie! You don’t believe him? For God’s sake, you can’t believe him!’
Archie scowled. ‘Sit down, Clare. You are lucky you have a husband who cares so much about you. In his place I’d have packed you off to an asylum!’
‘Archie, please.’ Antonia put her head in her hands. ‘I think I’m going to have one of my migraines. Oh, Clare, how could you!’ She began to sob suddenly, silent, piteous tears, squeezed from between eyelids still oily with night cream.
‘Look, Archie, how it’s upsetting Mummy. Couldn’t you give me the car keys then I could get out of your way? Please?’
Incongruously Clare felt a sudden uncontrollable urge to giggle, welling up inside her. This was all farcical, it couldn’t be happening! Did they really think they could keep her in the house a prisoner?
She took a deep breath. ‘Go back to bed, Mummy darling, and have a sleep. By lunchtime you’ll feel better.’
‘I think I will.’ Antonia moved towards the door. Outside the garden was beginning to brighten. ‘Archie, can you cope?’
‘Of course I can.’ Archie eyed his step-daughter doubtfully.
Clare looked at Archie as soon as her mother had left the room. ‘Archie, please –’
‘It’s for your own good, young woman.’ He put the cups and plates into the sink and left them there. His wife could do them later when she felt better. He turned to face her. ‘My God, Clare! How you could do this to your mother I don’t know! We brought you up to be a God-fearing Christian! What will people say if this ever comes out? Black masses in Suffolk for God’s sake!’ He shuddered.
‘Is that what he’s told you?’
‘It’s no more than the truth, Clare.’ Paul had appeared in the doorway. ‘I wanted to spare your parents all this heartache, but by coming to Scotland you have involved them. I can watch her now, Archie, if you want to go out with the dogs.’
Clare followed her father into the hall and stood watching as he turned towards the back of the house. With a pang she saw Casta follow, tail wagging as he whistled her after him. She turned and walked into the drawing room which was flooded with cold early morning sunlight, then she swung to face Paul who had followed her. ‘You bastard! What good do you think this is going to do?’
He smiled. ‘It’s going to make you change your mind about selling Duncairn.’
‘Never.’
‘We’ll see. You may not feel claustrophobic now, in the daylight, in a big house, but it will build slowly, and the more upset you get, the more your parents will be convinced about you
r instability.’ He was enjoying himself, she was sure of it.
‘You’re out of your mind, Paul!’
‘No. Desperate perhaps.’ He folded his arms. ‘If you want to be shot of me, Clare, all you have to do is give me power of attorney over your affairs. Once this business is all over I shall give you a divorce and you need never see me again.’
‘I am not going to give you power of attorney – I am not going to, Paul –’
‘Just as you wish. Then I shall take it. I think you’ll find that if an MP, a doctor and a minister of the Church all swear to your insanity it will be comparatively easy for me to get it, with or without your cooperation.’
‘They wouldn’t –’
‘Ah, but they would. You see they are all desperately concerned about you, Clare. They all know about your visions and the strange things you have been up to. You have told Geoff about them yourself, after all. No one forced you to do that, and David has spoken to someone who actually saw you conjuring ghosts out of the air.’ He smiled. ‘They all care about you, darling. They only want to do what is best for you, and it is best if you have no worries at the moment.’
‘I don’t believe you. They wouldn’t!’ Clare was really frightened. ‘You can’t keep me here! You can’t guard every door and window all the time. What happens when you have to go back to London?’
‘I’m not going until Wednesday.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll have what I want by then.’
‘And if I sign, then what happens? Do I have a miraculous cure?’
‘That’s up to Geoff. Your soul is his department. After all, Clare, I’m not making any of this up, am I? You can’t deny what you have been doing.’
Clare turned away, her face white. ‘But what I’m doing isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with it!’
‘Then Geoff will no doubt give you a clean bill of health.’ He smiled. ‘Personally, I think you are possessed.’
‘No.’ She shook her head desperately.
Paul folded his arms. ‘What about the beautiful Isobel, then? She just comes along for a chat when you’re lonely, is that it? Grow up, Clare, and face the facts! You need help. You’ve needed help for a very long time!’
The day seemed endless to Clare. As Paul had promised, every door was locked and she was never allowed to be alone for a moment. Either Paul or Archie followed her wherever she went. Antonia did not reappear. Outside the cold rainshowers swept in across the hills from the east, splattered against the windows and disappeared as swiftly as they had come, leaving the gardens brilliant with cold blustery sunshine. The two minutes’ silence came and went. Archie alone, in his study, stood at his desk, gazing into space and remembered. Antonia was asleep. Neither Paul nor Clare were even aware of what day it was.
Archie cooked a joint of beef for lunch and the three of them sat round it in the cold dining room in silence, picking at their plates. Tea and supper were the same. Clare watched and waited patiently, trying to force herself to relax, trying to keep calm, determined that Paul would not see her nerves beginning to fray at the edges. She had worked out what she was going to do. It was so obvious, and it would be easy once every one had gone to bed. As a child she had climbed often from her bedroom window, edging along the parapet and scrambling down the sloping roof to the old apple tree, and she was sure she could do it again. But she had to wait. She must not seem too eager. She must not let Paul suspect. It was just after nine when at last she stood up. ‘I may as well go to bed,’ she said. ‘I’m exhausted and my shoulder hurts.’
‘Good idea.’ Paul stood up too.
‘There’s no need for you to come!’ She had snapped at him without thinking, forgetting her resolution to be calm.
‘Oh, I think I’ll come.’ Paul smiled at her mockingly. ‘Is everything ready for her, Archie?’ He turned to his father-in-law.
Archie nodded uncomfortably and subsided once more on to the sofa before the fire. He sat hunched with his back to them as Paul opened the door for his wife and followed her out into the hall.
‘There is no need for you to come up, Paul.’ At the foot of the stairs Clare stopped. She spoke through clenched teeth. As the time for her escape came closer she was getting more and more nervous.
‘Oh, but there is, darling.’ He strode up the stairs beside her and accompanied her along the landing.
She had reached out to open her bedroom door when he took her by the arm. ‘Not here. Not tonight. We thought you might be more comfortable somewhere else.’
Clare froze. She clung to the door handle. ‘What do you mean, somewhere else?’
‘I’ll show you.’ He tightened his grip on her arm and he began to force her along the landing. At the north end of the corridor there was another staircase, leading up to what had been Aunt Margaret’s room in the old tower. Paul smiled. ‘We thought you would be happier up here. Archie has brought all your things up for you. It has the advantage of a bathroom of its own, and windows you can’t climb out of.’ He was dragging her now, up the narrow stairs, his hand around her wrist. She tried desperately to pull away, fighting him, her shoulder a mass of pain, but he was very strong. His fingers bit into her arm. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Clare, believe me,’ he muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Just remember, to get out of here, all you have to do is sign. It’s all so easy.’ He pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and flicking on the lights propelled her inside. She just had time to see that a new shiny bolt had been screwed on to the outside of the door below the keyhole before Paul banged the door behind her and she heard the key turn. Then the bolt slid home.
She stared round in despair, still hardly able to believe what was happening to her.
Aunt Margaret had loved this room. It was large, almost circular, built into the first floor of the sixteenth-century tower around which Victorian Airdlie had been built. Like most buildings of its date its windows were small, set deep into the thick walls, and they were high above the ground. There was no possibility of anyone escaping through them. The bathroom was built into what had been a storeroom next door and beside it, behind a thick oak door, a narrow spiral staircase led up to the room Margaret had originally used as a bedroom before she grew too old to climb the stairs. The room Clare stood in now had in those early years been a living room, giving the old lady a self-contained suite in the house. Above it again was another room which she had used as a studio, painting competent and very attractive surrealist watercolours until her eyes had failed her. Above the studio a staircase led up on to the roof of the tower, with its battlements and the flagpole where James used to raise the Gordon standard when they were children.
Cautiously Clare tried the upper staircase door. It opened. She ran up the dark, cold, winding stair, groping for the light switch at the top and she peered into her aunt’s former bedroom. It was empty save for the huge wooden frame of the bed, which had been built up there and could never be moved down the narrow winding stair. There were no curtains now, no carpets, not even a shade on the light bulb, and there was no heating. The room was bitterly cold. She did not bother to go up the next flight. That room would be empty too, filled with the memories of the sun-lit days when a younger Margaret had painted in the quiet stone room, the air sharp with the smell of turpentine and linseed oil. There was no point in going up on the roof. There would be no escape that way.
Turning off the light, Clare made her way back downstairs to the room which was still furnished. Her suitcases, she saw now, stood beside the four-poster bed, her old woolly dressing gown, from behind her bedroom door, was laid across a chair.
She went to the door and tried the handle, but it was still locked as she had known it would be. Paul had not been joking when he brought her up here, he had been deadly serious. She shivered again. She went over to one of the windows and looked out. The night was completely black. All she could see was her own white face, gaunt in the reflection, peering back at her. She drew the curtains sharply and stared round the room, overwhelmed with despair. She w
as a prisoner; a real prisoner in her own home! She sat down on the bed, realising suddenly that there were tears on her cheeks. She was exhausted, aching and very afraid.
It was a beautiful room. The four-poster bed, the table, the chairs, the coffers, all were carved out of ancient black oak, softened and cushioned by warm blue velvets and old worn brocades. The carpet was Aubusson; she had always wondered why her mother hadn’t taken it downstairs to show it off, but perhaps she hadn’t dared. This was still very much Margaret Gordon’s room and always would be. But Margaret Gordon wasn’t here. Clare had never felt more alone.
She stood up restlessly, drying her tears, and began to pace the floor. Her moment of self-pity over, she was once more frustrated, angry and very tense. Too tense even to have given a thought to Isobel. She was too preoccupied with her own worries.
She didn’t feel claustrophobic, not yet. It was a large room, a room she had always loved, and she was very aware of the two large echoing rooms upstairs, with above them the roof and the sky. She was not hemmed in. Not caged. Her mind shied away from the thought quickly and she frowned. The situation was beyond belief. If she told anyone what had happened she doubted if they would believe her. Probably that was what Paul was counting on. She thought of Emma suddenly, and her eyes filled with tears again. If only Emma were here. She could imagine Emma’s voice: My God, how bizarre! How Gothic! You mean he locked you up? One day they would laugh about this together, but not now, not yet. She shivered violently.
Again and again she pushed at the door, rattling the latch, but it held absolutely solid. Beyond it the house lay in total silence. She had no way of knowing what the time was. For the hundredth time she cursed the fact that she had left her watch behind in London – such a feeble, useless gesture of defiance. It felt late, but then she was desperately tired. Wearily she got up at last and went into the little bathroom. It was a gesture of normality to run a bath and change into her nightdress. When she came back into the bedroom it was growing cold. The radiator was still warm, but outside when she peered through the curtains she could see the silver moonlight streaming across the tops of the fir trees. They glittered with frost.
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