by Peter Benson
“Who knows?” said Mr Prior-Stewart. “She’s been listening to gossip. But whatever happens, Lord Henry will want to keep Miss Watson on. That’s what I came to tell her.”
“She’ll be relieved.”
“She is.”
“Good. I’ve no idea what she would do if she was forced to leave Belmont. It’s been her life.”
“She’s a treasure.”
“Yes,” I said, and we raised our glasses to her.
The cider was sour and foxed with thin strands of a jelly-like substance – a good sign, my companion explained – but I was inclined to take small sips and merely pretend to enjoy the stuff as we talked. I spoke about my work, the library and the masters of the French Enlightenment, and he told me about his work and how he had moved to Taunton when he had qualified, but was fast coming to the conclusion that the town was too small for him. The people – he explained – were stifling him, and his rooms were far too small. The attractions of the country had waned, and he supposed he was a city person. “Always was, always have to be…” he said, and I wanted to listen, but as he talked, my mind started to wander back to the events of the night, and I heard the scream in my head again.
“…so I am planning my return to London. I thought I could settle here, but I was mistaken. Wandering from one boring case to the next. A move seems the sensible thing.”
“I see.”
“And then I shall be able to…”
“Last night,” I blurted, “I had a very strange experience. It was quite frightening, quite disorientating.”
“Excuse me?”
“No,” I stuttered. “Forgive me. You were talking about moving.” I sipped the cider and winced. “Back to London?”
“What happened?” Mr Prior-Stewart moved towards me and gave me a look of concern. “Where were you?”
“In the fields behind Belmont. I met someone. A professor. At least, so he claims.”
“His name?”
“Professor Hunt.”
“Of course,” he said.
“You know him?”
He narrowed his eyes and nodded his head. “Oh yes. We represented him.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said.
“Have you met him?”
“Once. He came to the office.”
“What do you know about him? Miss Watson won’t tell me anything.”
“Nor can I,” he said, and he gave me a line about the oath of confidentiality he had been obliged to take before entering his profession, but it faded away as he spoke it. He looked one way and then the other, lowered his voice and said, “He’s a Professor of the Sciences. He moved here from Cambridge. He was working at the university, but from what I heard, you know…”
“No I don’t,” I said.
“He left under a cloud.”
“Did he?”
“Apparently.”
“Any idea what sort of cloud?”
He shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair. It broke across his forehead and spilt into his eyes. “I have no idea. Why? Did he have something to do with your strange experience?”
“Yes,” I said, and I told him about the sodden woods, the tiepin, the house, the scented heat and the scream. I told him about running back through the woods, but most of all I talked about the scream, the way it had cut through the night and its lonely pitch. And I said I had dreamt the worst dreams and now the cider was going to my head, and all I wanted to do was spend the rest of the afternoon lying in a dark room. But I had work to do. I had to get back to Belmont and I had been wasting his time, but he did not agree and said, “I understand he’s in dispute with the farmer who owns the fields behind his house. He believes he has rights of access.”
“Has he?”
He shrugged.
“Do you know anything about a sister?”
“No.”
“Apparently she’s staying with him, and he claimed she’s malarial, but I don’t know. I felt he wasn’t telling me everything. I believe malaria induces tiredness, and I don’t know, but…”
“But what?”
“I had the strangest feeling.”
“Of what?”
“Of deception.”
“And what made you think that?”
“Something in his manner.” I stared into my cider, swirled it and said, “I thought, whoever she is, whether his sister or not, she certainly doesn’t want to be there.”
“You are sure you heard a woman scream? Not a bird?”
I shook my head and said, “Do I look like I’d mistake a bird for a woman? Please, Mr Prior-Stewart. I know what a screaming woman sounds like.”
“And you’ve heard a few, have you?”
“You,” I said and I pointed at him, “know what I mean.” I did not mean to point. It was a rude thing to do, something my father would have chided me for. But I had made the mistake and now it was too late.
“I,” he said, pointing back, “have no idea what you mean. I met you for the first time this morning, and now you’re expecting me to read your mind.”
“No I’m not,” I said, thinking that under different circumstances he and I could have been friends, but now my boats were burning in their harbour. The flames were leaping into the air and it was too hot to stand on the quay. Fish were leaping and sad ballads were being sung by men in long dark coats. Candles blew out but there was no breeze. No breeze at all. Women turned their backs and climbed long streets to tiny houses. Empty rigging flamed, creaked, snapped and dropped into the water. Low birds were caught in the flames and fell out of the sky. The fire was reflected on the water, which was perfectly calm. “I’m not at all. I heard a woman screaming in Hunt’s house.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said and I drank some more cider. “No idea at all.” And it was true. I had lived a quiet life and was not used to this type of excitement. “No idea at all,” and as our conversation petered into silence, I took out my watch, checked the time and said, “I should be returning to my work.”
“Already?”
“Yes,” I said, and stood up.
“I suppose,” he said, “you could always ask Miss Watson about the Professor. I understand he and she had some, how can I put this, agreement…”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say.”
“She seems to have nothing but contempt for the man.”
“It didn’t use to be that way.”
“How did it use to be?”
“Well, I hesitate to speculate…”
“Or gossip?”
“I never gossip, sir, never. As a solicitor, it would be impossible for me.”
I almost laughed.
“No,” he said. “Lord Malcolm told me the story before he died, and he was unimpeachable.”
“So?”
So, shortly after Professor Hunt moved to the area, he called on Lord Malcolm to pay his respects. The two men found each other’s company agreeable, and when Miss Watson was introduced, she was particularly interested in the newcomer, as her father had once lived in Cambridge. They talked about the city, the colleges, the river and the Backs – and when, a week later, Hunt called again, he asked her if she would be able to do some food-shopping for him. Although she said she was already quite busy enough, she agreed: “As long as I don’t have to carry sacks of potatoes.”
“I don’t eat starch,” said the Professor. “Potatoes. I don’t eat potatoes.”
So Miss Watson started to do his shopping, cycling with his basket and carrying it back to Belmont on her bicycle. He was insistent that she did not have to deliver to his house. “I can’t have you walking through the fields,” he said, “if I could collect it from your kitchen, that would be splendid,” and she decided this considerate and intelligent man had some – if not all – of the qualities she liked in a man. In her mind it would have been indecent to think about men, but something about Hunt drew her in and would not
let go. Was it his precise, deliberate way of talking, or his shrewd, intelligent eyes? Or the quality of his suits? The polish of his brogues? She didn’t know, and the more she thought about him, the more confused she became. She was unsure of her feelings, surprised by them, so one day she resolved to carry his shopping to his house. She was curious to know how he lived, what sort of furniture he kept, and whether he was keeping his garden tidy. And while she was there, she could retrieve some books Lord Malcolm had loaned him.
She took up his basket, trudged the path through the fields and woods, and when she arrived at the house was surprised to find herself surrounded by weeds, tares and brambles. The paint was peeling from the front door, and one of the window panes was cracked. Maybe he simply had not had the time to make the necessary repairs, and was busy with more important things. She knocked, listened and was shocked to hear the sounds of curses, and rising above the profanities, a soft woman’s voice. A moment later, the door swung open and Hunt showed himself, his hair askew, his shirt unbuttoned and his face a-thunder. When he saw Miss Watson, his demeanour changed like the sun changes the look of some angry mountain, and a lively twinkle burst into his eyes. “Oh,” he said, “I thought I said there was no need for you to come to me.”
“I…” she said, but the rest of whatever she was going to say stuck in her throat.
“And I should say, Miss Watson, that when I say something, I mean it. I stick to my word, and I expect others to do the same.”
“Of course.”
“So,” he said, and now his voice suddenly turned black and edgy, “in future, simply leave the goods at your kitchen, as we agreed…”
Miss Watson took a box of eggs out of the basket and put them on the step. Then she unloaded a bag of beans, some apples, a bar of soap and a box of tea, stared back at Hunt and said, “And to think, when I met you I thought you were a gentleman.”
“Miss Watson…” Now his voice was sinister, but before he had a chance to finish what he was going to say, she interrupted.
“And His Lordship has also asked me to retrieve his books.”
“I haven’t finished reading them,” he said, wondering for a moment if he had met his match.
“His Lordship was most insistent.”
“Well you can go home and tell your master, tell him… tell him to whistle for them.”
“I think…”
“And if he can’t whistle,” said Hunt, and he pulled himself up to his full height and bared his teeth, “then he can blow a tune from his rear.”
Now Miss Watson almost fainted. She had never, not in fifty-one years, been spoken to like that. She made a desperate, wheezing sound, forced herself to move, turned and walked down the path to the garden gate.
“Miss Watson!” he called, but she was not to be stopped. She carried on walking until she was out of sight, and then she started to run, up through the fields to the woods. When she reached the trees, she found she was weeping, something she had not done for many years. “Tears?” she said to herself. “Over him? Over a man?” – and at that moment, standing beneath an ancient oak with the thatched house behind her and Belmont in the valley below, she resolved to turn her face away from emotion and simply think about work, her cats and the careful monotony of a domestic life.
When Mr Prior-Stewart had finished telling the story of Miss Watson, I sat for a few minutes shaking my head. Things were a little clearer now, but still misty. I finished my cider, he finished his and pointed to his carriage. “I can drive you back to the house.”
“No need,” I said. “I think the exercise will do me good.”
“It would be my pleasure,” he said, and for a moment I caught a look in his eyes that I did not find comfortable.
“I think…” I said, but he caught my indecision and said, “In fact, I insist.” So we said good afternoon to Mrs Beck and her dog, and I followed him back to the carriage and the lane to Ashbrittle.
The driver drove fast, and as we headed up the hill, Prior-Stewart and I did not talk, though there was a sharp, distinct atmosphere in the carriage. My feeling of unease grew when he let me out by the church and briefly put his hand on mine, squeezed it, leant towards me and said in a quiet and too familiar voice: “It was most pleasant to meet you. When I return to London, maybe we can arrange another meeting? I know of places…”
“Maybe,” I said, but I had no intention of doing such a thing, or discovering what sort of “places” he was referring to. So I said a brief “goodbye” and walked the last half-mile to Belmont, and I sat in the cool of the library with the curtains drawn and the dark, silent masters of the French Enlightenment, and the pad of sad Miss Watson’s cats in the hall.
My father was disappointed. When I left school I told him I wanted to go to Edinburgh University, but he did not understand my choice. I could not tell him I wanted to get as far away from Dover as possible, so I explained that I wanted to go to Scotland because the air was sweet and I wished to climb mountains, but he interrupted me with a lecture about the sort of people I would meet, the loose morals, the drink and the women. He sat behind his desk, and I sat in the chair normally reserved for troubled parishioners. After five minutes he tied himself in verbal knots, took a swift detour in memories of his own youth, got lost there, struggled back and with an exhausted sigh said, “Your mother would have been proud,” and gave me an envelope containing a photograph of her, a five-pound note and a pen. Two months later he accompanied me to the railway station with my bags, shook my hand on the platform, turned and walked away. As I watched him go, he tucked his hands into his coat pockets and hunched his back against the wind that blew off the sea, through the town and into the station. I waited for him to turn and take a last look at me, but he did not stop, and for a moment I thought I would never see him again. I had a premonition of his death, but it was a false one, and after my first term I returned to Dover and he was still there, sitting behind his desk with a half-eaten digestive beside him, still causing merry hell with the ecclesiastical authorities.
I read History, and in my first year I accompanied three women to dances I did not enjoy, discovered a taste for Scottish beers, travelled to the highlands and climbed a dozen or more mountains, had an argument with my landlord about a damp wall and spent six weeks in bed with an unidentified illness. When I recovered, I was so far behind with my studies that I moved into the library and worked harder than I had ever worked before. I wrote a thousand words a day, revised them at night, wrote another thousand and revised again. I narrowed my eyes and focused on nothing but the Restoration and balance of European power in the seventeenth century. And when I had finished, I went to my favourite public house and met Timothy.
Timothy was reading Medicine, and our friendship was founded on the fact that we were both from Kent. We did not have much else in common. His father owned a shipping company, his mother was – by his account – a widow in all but name, and he had the look of a man who had never been loved. He had been raised by a stern governess, and neither of his parents had seen him take his first step. His first word had been “Eva” and his second word had been a German curse. “Schwanz!” he screamed when his father slapped him on the back of the legs for no good reason, and from that moment on, he dedicated himself to fighting his parents’ will, opposing their wishes and proving he was stronger than fate.
He had been educated at boarding schools since the age of seven, and hid his intelligence behind nonsense and hyperbole. Within an hour of our first meeting, he told me there were only six people in the world who should wear deerstalkers, architects should pay twice as much tax as anyone else, and dog lovers should have to pass a detailed three-part exam before being allowed to keep a hound. But I did not think he believed what he was saying: his huge blue eyes gave him away, and I think he was simply voicing random ideas to see what effect they had. Because when I suggested he was talking nonsense, he did not stand his ground but went to the bar and ordered two more pints of the best beer.
He drank fast, smoked evil-smelling cigarettes and changed the subject. He told me his ambition was to write a novel, but was under pressure, too much pressure – pressure he had not asked for, did not want, could not cope with, wanted to take to a quarry and bury under a thousand tons of stone.
“What do you mean?”
“My brother went to Cambridge. He got a first, and Father’s grooming him to take over the company. Edinburgh” – he lit another cigarette and waved it at nothing in particular – “they think I’ve failed already.”
“I’m quite sure they think nothing of the sort.”
“What makes you say that? Have you met my parents?”
“No, of course I haven’t. I’ve only just met you.” I looked at him, and for a moment I thought he was going to weep. His face creased at the edges, and he stared into his drink. I said, “Do you think you’ve failed?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter what I think.”
“You’re fooling yourself.”
“Do I look like I’m fooling myself?”
“Yes,” I said.
He drank his beer in two gulps, said “I am not” and went to fetch another.
As he stood at the bar, he was surrounded by people who jostled and pushed around him, but he did not seem to notice them. He was tall but carried himself with a slight stoop, and as I watched him carry his drink back to the table, I saw a shadow pass across his eyes. He staggered and I thought he was going to drop the glass, but he did not. He managed to sit down, and as he stared at the glass, he said, “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What’s your story?”