by Guy N Smith
‘Ah, Mr Halestrom, delighted to meet you.’ The Reverend Pickering had long ago perfected the art of getting up out of an armchair, balancing a cup of coffee in one hand and shaking hands with the other. ‘I've … er … heard about your book.’
But you haven't read it - Ron smiled and took the proffered hand - because if you had you wouldn't be here trying to see if you can persuade me to go to your services. There were people you discussed your work with and others you didn't, and John Pickering fell into the latter category.
‘Your wife tells me that you have an afflicted daughter, Mr Halestrom.’
‘She's deaf.’ Ron hadn't the patience to go through the whole rigmarole of Amanda's life history; Marie usually did that. ‘She's away at boarding school, coming home on Friday for the half-term holiday.’
‘And I'd be delighted to meet her.’ Pickering sensed the opening he'd been looking for. ‘We still have a Sunday School in Gabor, you know. Only a handful of children but I'm loath to see it die out. You attend church yourselves, I presume?’
‘No, we don't, I'm afraid, Reverend.’ A direct question deserved a direct answer. No explanations, just watch for the reaction.
‘Oh, I see …’ Embarrassment, spilling some coffee in his saucer, glancing down at his shoes, subconsciously telling himself that the shine wasn't as good as it used to be when his dear wife was alive. ‘Well, if you do decide to come along, there's Communion at nine every Sunday, Matins at eleven and Evensong at six-thirty. Sunday School is at three-thirty.’
An uneasy silence, Marie refilling the vicar's cup as though trying to make amends for her husband's abruptness. Ron seemed to have it in for vicars, her lips tightened, but he needn't have been so blunt. ‘I'm sure Amanda will settle well into the community, Vicar.’ She had to say something. A lie because Amanda didn't settle in any community. She was a loner, preferring her own company to that of other children. They had tried various ruses to get her to mix but they hadn't worked. Even at parties she had a knack of finding a game she could play on her own. It was as though Amanda resented any intrusion into her own world of silence.
‘I hope so, too.’ The Reverend Pickering's smile faded and his teeth could be heard grinding on the nylon stem of his pipe; something he had to say but didn't quite know how to put it into words. The children in Gabor are … well, shall we say, reluctant to integrate. Not exactly unfriendly but … they don't play with one another as I would like to see them do. It seems to have been a custom here, long before I came to Gabor, for the children to return home directly after school and not go out again until the next day. There's a small green in the middle of the village but nobody ever plays on it. This attitude has always worried me; I used to visit the homes of these children once but their parents were always reluctant to let them go out to play. In the end I had to accept it. But it does not make for a happy village social life. I'm afraid it all stems from the parents - most of them will attend church on Sundays but outside that they don't want to mix. There's no Women's Institute nor Mothers' Union now, and the bowling green has not been used for years. I'm afraid Gabor is neither a happy nor a sociable place!’
‘But why?’ Marie Halestrom asked, an expression of incredulity on her freckled face.
‘I … don't know. Really, I don't.’ Pickering wrung his hands together in a gesture of despair. ‘One just has to keep soldiering on … hoping … The people here are so insular. My dear wife and I came here twenty-five years ago and to this day I have never been accepted. Not hostility, as I've already stated, simply a mute refusal to allow us to integrate. When poor Beth passed away I thought that at least they would turn out to the funeral to show their respect. But no,’ the old man's voice quavered. ‘there was only myself conducting the service and the organist. Nobody else. It was pathetic. Not a single message of sympathy from anybody in Gabor, yet they turned up at Matins the Sunday following as though nothing had happened. And you will be treated the same, I'm afraid, just formal politeness but nothing else. No interest, no conversation.’
‘Oh, I think you're wrong, Vicar,’ Marie broke in hastily. ‘Only a couple of days or so after we moved in I went down to the village shop for a few things and the lady there was most helpful. Asked all about us, chatted.’
‘Surely she did.’ There was a bitterness in the clergyman's tone now, a wry smile on his ruddy features. ‘And she told you about the legend of Bemorra, the village simpleton who was hanged and gibbetted for child murder in 1775.’
Marie Halestrom nodded, felt her stomach convulsing into a tight ball, a sensation as though she wanted to vomit.
‘Oh, she makes sure that all tourists passing through hear the legend,’ Pickering's voice quavered. ‘and that the locals are not allowed to forget it … almost as though she is the mouthpiece of Bemorra's curse! Mrs Mainwaring has a split personality; on Sundays she sings lustily and prays piously in God's house. On the other six days she has a vicious mischief-making tongue, hated by all who live in Gabor.’
‘Mainwaring!’ Halestrom stiffened. ‘Did you say Mrs Mainwaring, Vicar?’
‘Yes.’ Pickering nodded. ‘The woman claims to be a descendant of the wealthy family who owned the whole of Gabor from Saxon times until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the name is too much of a coincidence to doubt her word in these remote parts. Squire Mainwaring, the very one whose daughter was murdered by the mad Bemorra, is said to have had a number of illegitimate children amongst his peasant serfs. Possibly some of these survived the smallpox outbreak and took his name afterwards in the vain hope of inheriting his wealth.’
‘But why are the villagers frightened, skulking in their cottages, afraid to mix with each other?’ Halestrom asked. ‘Is there anything … going on here, Reverend?’
‘Who knows?’ Pickering shrugged his bent shoulders and rose shakily to his feet, a sign that this brief meeting was drawing to a conclusion. ‘I am a man of God, Mr Halestrom, and although I accept that there is evil in Man I cannot believe that the old legend of Gabor is still alive. I can neither confirm nor deny these rumours and I would not wish to emulate Mrs Mainwaring in trying to disturb either you or your good wife with these stories. Indeed, I only wished to warn you of the attitude of the villagers. I assure you that they mean you no harm personally, just that they resent anybody outside their immediate families. And should you decide to visit my church one Sunday then I can assure you that I would be delighted and you would have succeeded in making a lonely old man very happy.’
Ron Halestrom smiled and thought ‘emotional blackmail but the old boy means well.’
‘Good day to you both.’ Pickering turned on the steps, offered his hand again. ‘And please, if you are in the least disturbed by … anything at all, please do not hesitate to contact me. And I shall look forward to meeting your lovely young daughter before long. Now I must hurry along for I still have two sermons to prepare for Sunday.’
‘Well,’ Marie whirled on her husband the moment the Reverend Pickering was out of earshot down the long moss-covered drive. ‘and what d'you say to all that?’
‘Rubbish.’ Ron gave a laugh, hoped that it sounded convincing. ‘The same old legend that I researched in order to write The Strangler The trouble with you is that you haven't been around enough. We could choose from hundreds of villages to live in in the British Isles and each one would have its own legend-in-the-cupboard. Gabor's just one of many, no different.’
‘But this is Gabor House!’ There was a hint of panic, almost bordering on hysteria, in her voice. ‘The very home of the Mainwarings, the accursed family!’
‘Maybe you'd rather we lived in some tumbledown peasant's hovel,’ he sneered, and regretted the words the moment they were out. He reached to pull her to him but she eluded his grasp, slipped through the front door and banged it after her so that the shaky framework shuddered and vibrated its protest.
Damn you, Halestrom, you'll never learn; he kicked angrily at a section of loose skirting board. Just when ever
ything was calming down he had to go and start it up all over again. Christ, though, it wasn't his fault. It was that stupid old bugger of a vicar who was to blame, poking his nose into other people's business.
One thing was certain, Ron Halestrom wasn't going to attend any church services in Gabor. And if the villagers wanted to act like bloody scared schoolchildren then that was their lookout. It wasn't going to make one iota of difference to life in Gabor House!
Marie Halestrom's first desire was to get away from her husband, to go someplace where she could not hear his sarcastic supercilious voice. The trouble with Ron was, she decided, he had let success go to his head. One book, one stroke of luck, and he thought he was God's gift to the literary world. Well, he'd find out soon enough; scores of other writers had been swept up on to the crest of the wave by one book and then everything they wrote after that had been a flop. God, what wouldn't she give just to be back in the city, living in civilised surroundings on a moderate but sufficient income that demanded sanity. Gabor was madness in more ways than one.
Half-way down the drive, out of sight of the house, she stopped, knew there was one decision she had to make right now. She had stormed blindly out of the house with no destination in mind. OK, it was only a few minutes' walk into the village but suddenly that was the last place she wanted to go. A single shop combined with a post office and Mrs Mainwaring eager to pour forth numerous stories of Gabor's evil history; she didn't want to listen to any more of those. So the village was out, the mountains were too far, and anyway she didn't have the energy for long walks. Already the sun was high in the sky and the day looked like being a scorcher. The grounds … so far she had not ventured further than the patch of long grass and weeds that purported to be a lawn. Ron had mentioned that there was something in the region of ten acres of land which they now owned, eight of which were woodland. Maybe she had better have a look at them, make sure that the terrain was reasonably safe for Amanda to play when she came home on Friday night. Not that Marie was going to let her daughter out of her sight for a single minute!
So peaceful; doves and pigeons cooing in the shade of the tall trees, clattering out lazily at Marie's approach. A narrow path led through the shrubbery, skirting the lawn so that Marie was out of sight of the house even though she knew it was only fifty or sixty yards away. Wild bees buzzed in search of pollen and she stooped to pluck a stem of bracken to ward off the growing cloud of black flies which seemed obsessed with settling on any bare patch of flesh they could find on her body. Stepping over trailing brambles, a thought lurked at the back of her mind that the thick undergrowth might conceal adders. Ugh!
What a mess! Nature had truly claimed back the extensive gardens of Gabor House. She frowned her disapproval. It was going to take years to cultivate all this properly so that they could have borders lined with bedding-out plants, lawns mown short, roses pruned so that they flowered to perfection. But that was Ron's worry. He was set on being the new-style Squire of Gabor and Marie wasn't going to pull a single weed. It would do him good to soil his hands for once, do something apart from sitting at that blasted typewriter of his all day kidding himself he was some kind of genius.
Her train of thought returned to Amanda. She blamed herself for the child's loss of hearing. The doctors couldn't give a logical explanation but whatever the reason for Amanda's affliction the fault had to lie with herself. The guilt was like a cancer eating away inside her; a lot worse lately because Ron seemed so distant. Once he had cared, or appeared to, but this last couple of years he hadn't given a damn. Marie was trembling with anger, wished she could throw a tantrum but it wouldn't come, almost like an orgasm that suddenly decided to slip away and leave her irritable and frustrated. She could have thrown stones or kicked trees but it wasn't the same as hurling saucepans at the kitchen wall and banging the sink unit. Because there was no one to witness her demonstration, her marital protest. Just a futile waste of emotion.
This must be the start of Gabor Wood. She stopped, a feeling of awe creeping over her. She had conjured up a picture in her mind of a spinney, a copse like the one on the well-trodden common near their previous home. It wasn't like that at all, trees so huge and tall that they shut out the sunlight, almost like a cathedral where one walked on tiptoe and conversed in hushed whispers. Marie found herself stepping back a pace, tried to peer through the gloom. Trees and more trees; oaks, beeches, elms, ash … and a path that led right in amongst them, well-worn as though it was walked regularly. Probably it was. The villagers. Damn them, they were trespassing by coming here. Instinctively, subconsciously, she had adopted Ron's line of thinking and hated herself for it. Nobody owned land, God had given it to Man to use, to cultivate, to walk. But Ron didn't see it that way.
She could have gone back, almost did. Except that she would have had to face Ron, a rapid climb-down that even hours of sullen silence could not nullify. She had made up her mind to explore their recently acquired grounds and that was exactly what, she was going to do. Nervously she stepped forward into the cool daytime darkness of the wood.
After a few yards she stopped again, suddenly aware of the oppressive silence; even the flies had deserted her! A momentary pang of fear subsided to uneasiness. All her life she had been accustomed to the noises of town life but here there was nothing, not even a breath of wind to stir the fresh green leaves. She might have been the only living person on earth.
You're being silly, she told herself, silence can't hurt you. She forced herself to walk on, following the winding path, unaware that she was treading on tiptoe.
Pausing yet again, she looked about her, experiencing a sense of … sadness; nothing grew on the ground beneath these giant trees, not a single weed sprouting out of the dark soil. The branches overhead were so closely entwined that no daylight penetrated, and without light there was no life. A place of the dead!
She shivered. Maybe when Ron had cultivated the grounds he would fell this timber, replant a new young wood that would take a century or more to grow to such proportions, a friendly forest where plants would thrive and birds would sing. Wishful thinking. She considered retracing her steps but curiosity lured her on.
Marie came upon the pool so suddenly that she grasped instinctively at the nearest branch and held on, afraid that she might slip and fall into those dark, murky waters barely a yard in front of her. The expanse of water was too wide for the trees around the edges to meet in the middle, and bright sunlight dazzled her until her eyes became accustomed to it.
Slowly, Marie Halestrom took in every detail. A large quarry, the opposite wall towering sheer for a hundred feet or so, the slate long worked out so that the bottom had gradually filled with water; brackish evil smelling water that did not reflect the rays of the sun, colder and damper here than in the forest itself.
A narrow ledge ran out across the cliff, the kind that would be irresistible to children, a game of daring, a rocky tightrope with a plunge to the water below if you put a foot wrong. The branches that reached out across the surface, an invitation to the juvenile climber; look down into the water, see if you can see the bottom. Bet you can't because it's so deep. But try it all the same. The water itself, so black and still. No ripples because the wind never touched it. Try a swim. If you can do two lengths at the baths you'd reach the opposite side and back quite easily. But if you can't make it you'll go under and never come up again, never be heard of again!
Marie fought against her revulsion. Amanda was never going to come to this place!
She made up her mind to go back. This pool, like the forest, belonged to the past, a heritage of the dead, a gloomy hell that spawned its own legends for the villagers of Gabor to tell to all who came here so that it would not be forgotten. She had half-turned away but a compulsion had her gripping that branch more tightly than before, forced her to lean forward so that she could peer over the edge of Gabor Pool, stare at its inky surface. Look down into the water, see if you can see the bottom. Bet you can't because it's so deep but try
it all the same.
The water seemed to ripple but there was no wind today and even if there had been this old quarry was sheltered from it. Long-forgotten childhood terrors returned to torment her: there could be a large pike lying close to the top, or water snakes or a crocodile, or …!
Marie's mouth was dry, her eyes wide. Oh God, she didn't care what had disturbed the water, she just wanted to run from here, never to come back. But something made her stay, something stronger than curiosity.
Then she saw the face. A blur at first, and she waited for the ripples to smooth. Marie gave a low cry of fear, almost lost her hold on the branch and fell forward. It was the face of a child; at first she thought that it was her imagination playing tricks and that she was staring down at a likeness of Amanda. But it wasn't her own daughter. A similarity, particularly the nose and the mouth, but the face was too gaunt, the eyes wide with a terror that might have been Marie's own, those tiny lips parting, moving. Speaking.
Lip-reading came easily to Marie after the hours spent instructing and helping her deaf daughter to master a mute means of communication. Those two words which came up from the water at her were unmistakable, a cry that she almost heard, the force of it pounding at her brain.
‘Help me!’
Pathetic, awful. Marie dropped to her knees, plunged her arms deep into the cold stinking water, grasped at something which rippled again and was gone forever.
Then she was turning, running, the spell which had held her suddenly broken. Branches seemed to come alive, reaching out for her, trying to drag her back but she fought them off. Angrily they struck at her, whipped her face and body leaving red weals across her flesh.
The silence was gone, replaced by whispering voices. Come back, Marie Halestrom. Try a swim in the pool. Or clamber out onto those overhanging branches and try to see down to the bottom of Gabor Pool. Help me, because I'm still there, drowning. Amanda will come here, you won't be able to stop her!