Unhallowed Ground

by Gillian White

Buildings designed for rats not people because rats, being wise and resourceful creatures, could have burrowed their way out.

  Funny how she remembered the moment when she’d been given that fatal file. She could not remember other such moments, although there’d been hundreds over the years. Had that been a premonition? Oh dear God, had she known even then?

  Abruptly she got to her feet. A sad young man came to wipe her table with a dirty cloth. What the hell was he doing here? What sort of job was this? At his age he ought to be Godlike and proud, a brave young warrior with all the world at his feet. She suddenly felt such a surge of anger she almost grabbed his arm and asked him. How damn patronizing. At least he had a useful job. At least he wasn’t going round killing children. She left the motorway restaurant and gave Lola a run. She fed the dog some biscuits and gave her a drink of water. She returned to her car and shoved in her favourite tape, Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’, before driving off. She wanted to find Wooton-Coney before dark, and already the horizon was dimming. She had her duvet in the back and a small box of groceries: cheese, apples, a loaf, biscuits, coffee and tins of dog food. Lola spent the journey nesting in her favourite place, the blanket on the passenger seat. Our practical heroine had matches, too, and a paraffin camping light in case the electric was off and she couldn’t work it out. The last thing she needed was to be stranded in a strange place in the dark.

  Helen advised, ‘Book in at a hotel for the first night for God’s sake. Take some of the pressure off.’

  ‘There’s no need to rush back,’ said Roger, reassuring.

  At the time Georgie was resting her feet on Lola’s soft back; the dog could get no nearer the fire except if she lay in the actual flames. ‘No, I’d rather go straight there. If I leave early enough I’ll have time to find it while it’s still light.’

  ‘But the weather,’ said Helen. ‘What if you can’t get there because of the weather?’

  ‘That was my excuse, Helen, if you remember! I watched the forecast and they don’t give it so bad down there. There’s only a scattering of snow on the moors.’

  ‘Change your mind and let me come with you.’

  ‘I want this to be difficult, Helen. I know that sounds daft, but I need to deal with this one myself. These are the kind of problems I should be able to solve on my own, and I want to get back to managing again. Solving something. Overcoming something.’

  ‘You do sound crazy. Maybe you’re not up to going.’ This whole enterprise was Helen’s fault. Had she been too premature?

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Roger.

  And Georgie felt an insatiable longing to escape from all this concern, human voices, telephone calls, accusations, sympathy, she felt an almost obsessional need for some kind of privacy again. ‘Helen, if it looks as if I’m not going to make it I’ll check in at one of those motel rooms, or a pub, somewhere Lola’s allowed. Nowhere’s going to be full at this time of year.’

  But all that positive thinking happened before she’d started out; that was at the planning stage when it all felt quite exciting. An adventure. That was when there were maps to peruse with neat printed names, not endless motorways and ill-lit signposts half hidden by road grime and slush.

  She would have liked to have someone as comforting and comfortable as Helen with her then.

  FOUR

  JUST AS, BETWEEN SHAFTS of light, God peers hairily out of his heavens, so a February sun pierced an incredible sky and illuminated Georgina Jefferson’s first sight of Furze Pen Cottage, and the unreality of it, the sheer unlikelihood of the sparkling, snowy scene, put her in mind of the most fantastic pictures in her illustrated Children’s Bible.

  The white light of exultation.

  Noah glorying after the flood.

  Even the cobwebs were frosted, like tracery upon silence. She felt her presence misty as a ghost’s.

  With her heart in her mouth and sweat prickling under her arms, she had skidded down a final meandering lane to get here. Don’t panic. Stay calm. And Mark’s ‘always turn into the skid’, Mark the responsible, Mark, the man voted by Helen to take Toby’s place in Georgie’s life. The rest of the roads might be clear but, despite the weather forecast, there was snow on Dartmoor and the last hour of hair-raising driving wore Georgie out. And here in the valley, where the sun doesn’t shine until late afternoon, the snow lay virginal and thick on the ground. The earth was corrected of every flaw and made perfect at last. She let her car remain where it was, at the end of a skid—she couldn’t have moved it—and, hanging on to the door for safety, she got out and gazed around, incredulous. Beyond the snowy verge was a stream with icicles dripping from fronds of bracken and stepping stones the size of boulders plodding regularly through the water. Beyond this was a wicket gate, and the sign, ‘Furze Pen’, hung slatternly from a crooked nail.

  Come on, come on then. Dare you to cross!

  ‘My God.’

  The path that led from the stream to the door was invisible, the door itself winked out from under an eyebrow of thatch. The whole impression was a hairy one, the long, low cottage almost obscured by the mass of thatch that roofed it, like a child in an overlarge hand-me-down, and all the windows appeared to be shy and at ground level. One witchy chimney gestured to the sky like a thin arm waving, but even that had a hairy stack tangled with snow-covered ivy. She imagined the cottage in summer, beds foaming with Michaelmas daisies with tall sunflowers nodding above them and the manifold stars of the clematis clustering over the small stone porch. Granite mushrooms were dotted about with wild indiscrimination, leaning, tall, short, thin, stunted, a cultivated crop of pure white fungi.

  ‘This is unreal.’

  Was that a robin on the roof?

  And the whole was dazzled by a coating of frosted icing, so bright you had to screw up your eyes, so glittery it was breathtaking—a Christmas cake iced by an overactive child or an inebriated housewife.

  Georgie had arranged to collect the key from Lower Wooton Farm, so, with Lola still asleep in the car, glad of her boots and sinking into the depths of her duffel, she made her unsteady way further down the road, over a cattle grid, up to a barely flowing ford and towards the front door of a farm directly on the road. No garden.

  She stood there, getting colder and knocking for a futile five minutes before she realized there was not going to be any answer.

  Sod it.

  But sensible and determined as ever she set off round the back, picking her way through clumps of steaming dung. She called out hello softly at first, then louder, afraid of giving someone a fright. They would not be used to visitors here. The farmhouse was long and thatched like the cottage, but five times larger, and it did not seem to hide away in the same cautious manner somehow. It declared itself and the life within with utilitarian pride—there was brown paper instead of curtains at some of the grimy windows, lids over eyes that will not look. Amidst the glorious snow lay snarled pieces of corrugated iron. A diesel tank, some inner tubes and orange bundles of baler twine stood out in defiance of the beautiful scene, fists raised and ready for blows.

  Hell’s bells.

  Seeing a light over the back door of the house Georgie headed hopefully towards it. Finding no bell or knocker she rapped on the open door and waited, huddled and cold, in a porch full of piled-up newspapers in bundles, so you had to squeeze between to get through. She knocked a second time, then a third before calling, ‘Hello!’

  The woman arrived out of total silence, her hair a lifeless grey, stick legs implanted in stained and moth-eaten slippers. Brown socks crumped down over them. She pulled her shrunken cardigan round her, stared hard out of beady black eyes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m really sorry to disturb you but I am Georgina Jefferson, Stephen’s sister, and I’m here to collect the cottage key.’

  The woman drew in a breath which exaggerated her thinness. The brown and cream dog-tooth skirt was clipped round her waist with a safety pin, and a pink wool jumper and brown cardboardy cardigan hung off her skeletal
frame. At no time did the hostile black eyes unhook themselves from Georgie’s face.

  She felt impelled to go on and explain. ‘The key, the key to Furze Pen Cottage. I am Stephen’s sister.’ And she even began to search in her pockets for the solicitor’s letter, for proof of her identity, for an excuse for this invasion, but she had no need because the woman finally nodded and said, ‘Wait there, I’ll go and get it.’ No smiling introductions. No kind enquiry about her journey. No commiserations over the death of a neighbour who had lived on her doorstep for at least twenty years. No offer of a cup of tea.

  Curses.

  After a minute the woman returned with a sealed brown envelope. The words, ‘Furze Pen’, were printed in bold on the front.

  ‘I have left my car on the road, I’m afraid. I hope it won’t be in anyone’s way. I must have slid the last quarter of a mile…’ She tailed off feebly. Damn her, if she didn’t want to talk, well, Georgie felt the need after her solitary journey, after the last terrifying half-hour. Perhaps she expected some sympathy, some crumb of comfort, but her swarthy-faced neighbour wasn’t having that. Reluctant to leave, no matter how unwelcome she felt, Georgie looked up at the sky and tried again cheerfully. ‘D’you think there’s more snow on the way?’

  ‘Who can say,’ snapped the woman, pulling stiffly at her cardigan again, her face a still, dark tarn of distrust.

  ‘You must be Mrs Buckpit.’ Georgie’s voice was overfriendly, lubricated with goodwill, compensation for the frost between them. If only Helen was with her now. How laughable this would be, how absolutely laughable.

  The face before her narrowed with suspicion, as if knowledge of her name revealed some terrible secret. Half turned away she said sourly, ‘I am, yes.’ And then she snapped, ‘You’ll be wanting milk.’

  Georgie had her own milk, but she said, ‘Oh, that would be nice,’ in another attempt to be neighbourly. ‘Perhaps I could come and fetch it in the morning?’

  ‘No need. You’ll find a pint on your step.’

  ‘I am slightly worried about things like water and electricity. I wondered if there was anyone who might come with me to show me the ropes.’ She stood on one frozen foot, then another.

  ‘Nothing’s been turned off. Everything’s been left as it was.’

  ‘But the solicitor mentioned something about a water pump.’ She was making a nuisance of herself, Mrs Buckpit made that quite clear.

  ‘It’s only a matter of pressing a button. You’ll find it in the shed.’

  By now Georgie’s irritation was rising. There was, after all, a limit, and this woman’s disagreeable manner verged on the downright rude. She caught herself from snapping back, Oh, of course, how silly of me for not knowing that, when the woman softened enough to say, ‘There’s kindling and logs in the woodshed to the right of your back door. The key to that’s in the envelope, all tagged and sorted.’

  She wouldn’t be damn well undermined by those nasty, fluffy-toy, bead-button eyes.

  The electric came down the lane on wires strung to miniature pylons, splintered, temporary, rustic structures like lines of ancient crucifixes. Thank God for the power of man. The telephone wires took another route, staggering drunkenly over the fields. As yet there was no connection to the cottage; they passed it and strode on.

  As she made her unsteady way back to her car, Georgie noticed the other two dwellings which made up the hamlet of Wooton-Coney. Opposite the Buckpits’ farm, on her side of the lane, was a much finer building, a traditional longhouse in the same style as the others, but far less decrepit. It looked as if it had been done up, the stone work had been pointed, and even with the snow on top the thatch was newer and neater. There were bushes in the garden, whoever owned this house cared. Up the hill, further on from the ford, was a fourth house, another cottage but larger than Stephen’s. The lights at the windows reminded Georgie that it was already dusk.

  The stepping stones, the only possible route to the gate, were white and treacherous with frosted water. She crossed in a crablike motion, half crouched, dragging poor Lola by the collar. In daylight she would have looked ridiculous, but in this half dark nobody could see, and why would they want to anyway? Georgie cursed to herself as the hem of her duffel coat trailed in the fast flowing water that bubbled up under jigsaws of ice. The key was more suited to the keep of a castle than a humble cottage. It was loose in the lock and hung heavily in her hand. She turned it, patted the spaniel encouragingly, and went in.

  Stephen had clearly died without giving a toss as to who might come later.

  The light—she hadn’t realized that switches like this one still existed, round and painted—at least the light went on. And with the light rushed the smell of neglect and decay, of damp and ancient stone. She left the door wide open when she crossed the stream precariously once more and emptied the contents of the car out onto the grass. She was glad of the interior light, which cast soft patches of yellow on white.

  How much more fun this would be if somebody else were around. Even Mark the responsible would have done. Concerned as ever, he had asked to come with her, but Georgie had refused. She blinked away the pitiful sight of the hurt in his eyes, she had more than enough to contend with already. But still she muttered to herself, ‘I’m sorry, Mark, I’m sorry.’

  I can’t love you, I’m sorry, I can’t.

  Then, like a ferryman, it was backwards and forwards across the stream; the bedding was particularly cumbersome, she couldn’t see where she was going, and in the end she flung it across on a wing and a prayer. By the time she’d finished, Georgie was sweating hard from her exertions and from the awful thought of missing a step and falling into that freezing-cold water. Her breath, where it hit the air, froze in white balloons. She was desperate to get inside and close the cottage door behind her, no matter what comforts it lacked.

  Her voice was winded and weary. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Lola. OK, OK, we should never have come. But at least we’re out of the car, and I’ll get the place warmed up in a minute.’

  For a sensitive man, for a man who presumably spent his life devoted to art, Stephen was remarkably unaffected by his spartan surroundings: there was no ordered harmony here. The lampshade which hung from the central beam of the long low sitting room was of yellowing-white plastic imitating raffia, and long-dead flies were stuck to the flaky rim. No efforts towards homeliness had been attempted. Beside the blackened hearth was one dowdy armchair in a loose, ill-fitting brocade. Someone had piled papers and magazines upon it: a half-hearted attempt to clear up? A limp rug of mottled purples bobbled across the uneven stone floor, and to one side of the room stood a gateleg table, heavily lacquered and chipped. On this, where the piles of books did not meet, there were layers of dust. Two upright chairs were pushed neatly up to the table and Georgie could only wonder who had met and talked here, or eaten here, and what sort of food would be served at a table which lacked such charm or style. Frozen beefburgers and chips?

  No vases. No lamps. No personal trinkets, ornaments, photographs, floor cushions. No, not even a clock to mark the passing of life.

  No life.

  What did she want from him, dammit, a note? I must put up with it. I’m here now and I don’t have to stay long. This is what she wanted, wasn’t it? Punishment, harsh and severe?

  The door to the staircase creaked uneasily, otherwise the house was utterly hushed. With Lola lopping a long behind her, Georgie climbed the threadbare stairs and arrived straight in a bedroom which must have belonged to Stephen. The bed was bare, the mattress rolled up to expose the springs, and a folded candlewick counterpane. She moved it slightly, the single stained pillow was striped and uncased. A simple rug lay beside the bed, and thin unlined curtains hung from tiny windows that looked out back and front. Other than these, and one small chest of drawers, the room was empty. No mirror. No bedside table. No bedside light.

  Oh, did you die here at night, Stephen, in this very room? Night after night, is this where you lay in your
drink-induced unconsciousness? Did your bloodshot eyes stare at this very ceiling, or were you too pissed to get this far? Did you lose your fight with gravity and collapse downstairs in the chair by the fire?

  Mutely wallpapered with a garden trellis design, the second bedroom connected to Stephen’s but was more the size of a boxroom. Here there was no furniture at all, no curtains at the tiny windows, not even a shade on the light bulb, but there were myriad paint stains on the floor, vivid stains of the colours an artist might use, not for house decoration. So this is where he must have worked. The smell of oils mingled in here with mouse droppings and old fruit. Georgie touched the paint smears gently with the tip of her boot and thought that the colours she saw on the floor were the nearest she might ever get…

  She pictured him then, her stereotyped fantasy brother, wild-eyed and manic in his smock and hand-sewn boots. A rude and intolerant man with the kind of passionate energy she’d always wished she had possessed, brawling in the local pubs, a bottle to his lips, a man with a flaring temper, not interested in pleasing anyone. Not concerned with the importance of image.

  A wolf of a man who howled at the night, but honest, at one with the world, which he would see as wonderful, miraculous, awesome, astounding, outrageous. Impatient with the small comforts and boring inconsequential with which Georgie seemed to surround herself.

  A few confrontations with the media probably would have amused him. Disgrace would have ricocheted off him.

  She pursed her lips. How pathetic he would think his sister, frightened and furtive, with nowhere to put her passion. She was angry with Stephen. Terribly angry. And morbidly miserable.

  To fight the depression and the feeling of let-down after she’d found the courage to come here, she retraced her steps, passed through the kitchen, unbolted and unlatched the back door, seeking the woodshed with a flickering torch. She had no need, for the light in the small stone building went on and she busied herself with armfuls of kindling, followed by a washing basket of logs. She pressed the button her neighbour had mentioned and heard the whirring water pump. Eureka! She sat before the fire place on the cold thin carpet, breathing heavily as she arranged and lit it. The comfort which came with the instant warmth might be the fire or her satisfaction—perhaps the combination of both.