‘Get away from here!’ she sobbed. ‘Leave us alone – oh, leave us alone!’ She was almost ready to give up, but from a corner of the room where Eric waited, a hoarse sound like a painful crowing gave her the strength to fling herself forward far enough to reach one leg of the bed.
‘You haven’t won, you and the Lord – you can’t win.’ She pulled herself up and stood panting, leaning against the bed, looking all round the restless room with staring eyes to find him.
‘Kill…’ His voice was fainter. It was nowhere and everywhere. It wailed off into a child’s sob so desperate that Rose was able to push herself upright from the bed and, with a tremendous effort of will, stand firm in the middle of the treacherous floor.
‘Oh, Eric—’ she raised her arms and held them out, fists clenched, then opening, palms up, as her spirit reached out desperately to his anguish. ‘She’s dead, I tell you. You don’t need to hate her any more!’ The room held its breath. ‘You’re free – you’re not a slave to evil, you’re free!’
Something light and swift, like a child’s fingers, touched her hands. ‘Let go!’ Rose whispered, and the tension in the room relaxed in a soundless sigh. The feel of it was lighter, emptier. In a shadowy corner, a slithery weasel movement disappeared into the wall. Rose took a few hesitant steps forward and saw that the picture of the boy in the red sweater lay face up with the glass broken. Eric had gone away. Room 4 was free.
Moving like a sleepwalker, Rose rehung the broken picture and went back to bed. Her body and mind were exhausted, but it was the blessed fatigue that comes after the pure effort of strong thinking, or hard exercise outdoors. For the first time since she had had the nightmare about the train accident, she slept without dreaming.
In the morning, the gentle ward sister came in to see her, and drew back the curtains to flood the room with daylight. After she had left, Rose got up and sat by the window to look at the clear morning that had wiped out darkness and fear.
‘Out of bed?’
The door opened and Mollie came in. ‘I thought you were to stay lying down.’
‘I’m better. The headache’s gone. I’m not dizzy now.’
Rose stood up and moved towards her mother, and they met on the spot where she had stood her ground last night, in the middle of the clean, delightful room, with their arms round each other.
‘I’m so glad.’ Mollie was crying, her cheek on top of Rose’s head.
‘So am I. It’s all right, Mum. It’s all right. I’m strong.’
‘You’re stronger than me.’ Mollie held her off and looked at her in the light from the bed, and laughed, with her face full of tears. ‘I’ve lived and died a hundred years in the twenty-four hours you’ve been here. I need you, Rose.’
‘You got me.’
‘Come on, sit down again.’
Being strong and courageous was a fine thing, but being someone’s child, tucked up in a blanket, head stroked, hand held, being necessary – that was fine too.
Weeks after all this happened, Mrs Ardis told Rose that what she had thought was a poltergeist at Wood Briar was really electrical forces from Outer Space that were monitoring the British coast.
‘You don’t believe it?’ she asked, because Rose was staring dumbly. ‘What’s that cigar-shaped object I saw in the western sky when I was shaking out the mat?’
‘Do you believe it?’ Rose asked.
‘I believe what I see with my own eyes.’
‘So do I,’ Rose said.
Two days after it all happened, Rose and Abigail went with the actors to their last performance, before they went off to conquer Scotland.
Abigail helped with the costumes and props and did a brief tap routine with Ilona, biting her lips and looking at her feet. Rose was in charge of Noises Off. When Frank was Don Quixote with a long grey beard and a horse made of Toby and Ilona under a blanket, Rose made the sound of hoofs with two empty coconut halves on the floor.
There seemed to be two horses. Behind the scenery, Rose sat back on her heels with the coconut halves poised in the air, and listened to the clatter of hoofs outside. Favour was going at a brisk pace, galloping towards her along the street. Through the dirty window at the back of the theatre, she saw him flash by like a triumphant white banner, and then he was gone, his hoof beats fading down the street.
Toby stuck his head round the edge of a piece of scenery. ‘Where’s the horse noise?’ he whispered.
‘Didn’t you hear?’
‘No one heard anything.’
Of course not. Favour’s victory gallop was for nobody but Rose.
A Note on the Author
Great granddaughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world in which she was brought up, she acted out – she was expelled from St Paul’s Girls’ School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge. Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands, published in 1939.
Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but she continued to set the majority of her writing in Britain. No More Meadows, which she published in 1953, reflected her work with the NSPCC – she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children’s books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals and, to some extent, children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.
Discover books by Monica Dickens published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/MonicaDickens
Closed at Dusk
Dear Doctor Lily
Enchantment
Flowers on the Grass
Joy and Josephine
Kate and Emma
Man Overboard
No More Meadows
One of the Family
Room Upstairs
The Angel in the Corner
The Fancy
The Happy Prisoner
The Listeners
Children’s Books
The House at World’s End
Summer at World’s End
World’s End in Winter
Spring Comes to World’s End
The Messenger
Ballad of Favour
Cry of a Seagull
The Haunting of Bellamy 4
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1986 by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd
Copyright © 1986 Monica Dickens
All rights reserved
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make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448214044
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The Haunting of Bellamy 4
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