His words hung meaningfully in the air.
‘How are you on chilli con carne?’ I asked.
He rolled his eyes and kissed his fingers in burlesque imitation of the archetypal French chef.
And that was how Warren Turner came to stay at Whispering Corner. I suggested that, being sick of my own pathetic cooking, he could have a bed for the night in return for making supper. The deal was struck and he went off to the village to hunt for ingredients while I returned to my study. Perhaps it was not surprising that when I tried to visualize my character James Falco took on the image of the young Australian.
*
Late in the afternoon Warren began work in the kitchen and, never having seen a professional cook at work before, I was amazed at the speed and deftness with which he prepared the food. There was even style in the way he cracked an egg.
When thickening dusk merged the surrounding trees into oncoming night there was a tap at the door and the Reverend Gotobed stood without holding a plastic folder.
When he realized I had company he tried to beat an immediate retreat. The very last thing he wanted to do was intrude. He’d only come to leave some of his early chapters for me to glance at if I didn’t mind. He’d come again at a more convenient time …
But it was not difficult to persuade him to stay. As a bachelor it seemed that he had nothing more than television or his work to occupy his evening, and I could see that he would relish both the company and the food whose spicy smell was infiltrating the house.
I offered him an Amontillado — Warren and I had already enjoyed several aperitifs — and once he was in a comfortable chair with a glass in his hand all thought of returning to the vicarage for his boil-in-the-bag supper vanished. And while off-stage Warren intoned a dirge about bushrangers and Botany Bay, no doubt a gem from Australia’s cultural past, the Reverend Gotobed — or Henry as he asked to me call him — endeavoured to start a literary conversation.
The fact is I am not literary. I am unable to recognize the underlying symbolism, social significance and psycho-philosophy which critics are so good at discovering in an author’s work, often to his utter surprise.
To me the function of a novel is to entertain, and I had no intention of getting involved in an analysis of horror fiction with Henry. As soon as I could, I steered him on to the subject of the previous occupant of Whispering Corner.
‘I suppose you could describe Miss Constance as an eccentric. She was certainly a recluse,’ he said. ‘She lived here alone after the death of her father, who I believe was something of an amateur astronomer. Apart from an annual visit to a war cemetery in France, Whispering Corner was her world. Generations of schoolkids used to scare each other with stories that she was a witch, and I suppose in an earlier age adults would have thought so too, because of her habit of holding conversations with her cat, a great white beast named Mrs Foch. I remember the animal had the most malignant eyes.’
‘I hear that it’s still around in the woods,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Miss Constance taught her to hunt, as though she wanted her to be able to fend for herself when she was no longer around to feed her. Mrs Foch ran off after Miss Constance was found dead here …’
He trailed off, perhaps thinking that such a remark might be disagreeable for a new owner.
‘What did she look like?’ I asked, my interest in Miss Constance rising.
‘Nothing witchlike. She was small, with a rose and white complexion and large sad eyes. As a girl she suffered a tragedy. Her fiancé was killed in the first Battle of the Somme. She remained faithful to his memory, as the old expression went. The garden was her consolation. I’ll never forget when I made my first visit here. She was wearing a white muslin dress and held a parasol in one hand and a trowel in the other for all the world like an illustration from an Edwardian ladies’ magazine. But she would put on her wellies and dig like a navvy when necessary. Part of her eccentricity was her dress. She wore Edwardian-style clothes — probably had such a large wardrobe in her heyday that she never used it up. When she came to church on Christmas Day the younger women used to giggle at her get-up, but I thought she looked rather splendid. The only other day she came to church was on the first of July each year. My predecessor always made sure there was a good display of flowers on the altar that day. A kindly thought.’
*
The supper was a great success, thanks mainly to Warren, not only for his cooking but also for his enthusiastic conversation. I have found that ninety per cent of social conversation is about other people, so unless you know what old Hugo is up to or the latest scandal about Tracy and Tim you’d better forget it and concentrate on the food and booze.
As none of us shared mutual friends we were, in fact, three strangers unexpectedly gathered together, the talk was fresh and full of interest. Warren certainly charmed Henry with his talk about the ancient Christian shrines he had visited such as Walsingham and Lindisfarne. The fact that he discussed them in the same breath as pagan sites did not disturb the vicar at all. Soon they were in a heated discussion on the merits of the Celtic Church and whether the Synod of Whitby had done the religious life of this country a disservice. This topic exhausted, they moved on to ley lines.
I smiled to myself as I heard Warren expounding his ideas. Ever since I had written The Dancing Stones I had received letters from people who liked to believe that there was something mystical about Britain’s cromlechs and the imaginary lines which were supposed to link them into some sort of anagogic pattern. It seemed to me that with the old-established dogmas no longer shielding us from the chaos of existence, many people today desperately seek new areas of faith, ranging from belief in the power of ancient ‘earth energies’ to the utterances of Rolls-owning messiahs.
The concept of ley lines — really the old straight trackways which criss-crossed prehistoric Britain — was rediscovered by the photographer Alfred Watkins in the early twenties when, on a peak in the Bredewardine Hills, he had a vision of an orderly relationship between standing stones, holy wells and ancient pagan sites. He examined Ordnance Survey maps with new eyes and found that many such sites were in exact alignment with each other and, as he ruled lines across his maps, perceived the reality of his hilltop notion.
After careful investigation Watkins published his book The Old Straight Track and, though he only saw his ley lines as paths by which prehistoric man travelled about the country, there are now those who believe they are mysterious channels for geometric power — Warren for one.
Turning to me, he said, ‘Did you know your house stands on an intersection of leys?’
‘I hadn’t the faintest idea.’
‘It makes it quite special,’ he continued. ‘And it explains why it is so close to the church. Early churches were often built on pagan sites which were inevitably ley centres. It was supposed to endow them with some sort of psychic force. A conjunction of leys creates conditions conducive for paranormal manifestations. Britain’s best known haunted sites are nearly all situated on ley centres.’
‘That might explain the whispering phenomenon here,’ said Henry quite seriously, and he went on to relate the legend to Warren whose eyes lit up.
I poured more drinks and sat back while my guests grew more and more animated. In researching material for my horror novels I have been through the gamut of the occult, and while I recognized its entertainment value I had no more faith in what my friends were discussing than I did in werewolves. Yet Warren’s talk about Whispering Corner’s being on a ley centre could not have come at a better time. The terrors that my hero Falco was about to endure could certainly be linked to such an ancient mystery.
4
‘You look rough,’ Warren said as I walked into the kitchen. ‘I’ve got coffee perking and I reckon that’s just what you need.’
I nodded and sank into a chair.
‘Too much booze last night,’ I said, but for once that was not the reason. I had experienced something for whic
h I could find no explanation, which had robbed me of sleep. I had no intention of telling Warren about it, though, knowing he would put some fanciful interpretation on it.
At midnight Henry had bidden us an effusive goodnight and departed with an unsteady step up Church Walk, after which I had had a final nightcap with Warren and then gone to bed. I felt better than I had done for a long time, thanks to good food and company and the fact that at last I had begun to feel I knew where I was going with the novel. Ideas were coming together and as I closed my eyes I estimated that if I could produce two thousand words a day for the next twelve weeks I should be able to deliver Whispering Corner on time.
I may have been asleep for an hour when I awoke and was conscious that I was not alone. A sound of breathing came from the other side of the double bed. For a moment it was as though I was back in the days when Pamela and I used to share a bed and I would sometimes wake to hear her regular breathing.
But for several years I had been sleeping alone,
Pamela was on the other side of the Atlantic and I was no longer in the family home.
Then who?
Surely Warren was not a sleep-walker, or interested in sharing my bed. I slid my hand over the sheet, expecting to touch human flesh. Nothing. Yet the rhythmic breathing continued.
Then I thought I had the explanation. I was lying on my side and as my head had slipped down from the pillow my face was pressed against the mattress. Through some acoustic effect, probably due to the coiled springs it contained, I must be listening to my own breathing.
There was an easy way to test the theory. I held my breath.
The gentle sound continued.
I must confess that then I had a moment of fear, not of some inhabitant of the ghost world, in which I did not believe, but for Pamela. I knew there were cases when a telepathetic signal at the point of death manifests itself as a touch on the shoulder, the sensation of a hand being clasped, a murmured name. Could this breathing mean that she had been taken ill or mugged in the subway?
‘Pam!’ I cried aloud.
No response, no quickening intake of breath, no sigh.
For what seemed several long minutes I lay perfectly still, not knowing what to do and reluctant to investigate further.
At last I forced myself to act. I sat up and groped for the switch of the bedside lamp. The sounds became fainter.
As the light came on silence filled the room. Now that I was more awake my fears for Pamela receded. Experiments have shown that telepathy works in close proximity, but I doubted if the human brain was capable of transmitting a message for a couple of thousand miles. I automatically ruled out the possibility of the supernatural, but what could it have been? It was too lifelike to have been the aftermath of a dream.
The only conclusion left was that it was something connected with my own mental state, perhaps an oblique warning that I was in danger of a nervous breakdown. I knew that hearing imagined sounds can be one of the symptoms.
I pulled the duvet back over me and tried to escape into sleep, but it was impossible. A phantasmagoria of disturbing thoughts — anxiety over Whispering Corner, regret over my failure with Pamela, a sense of life having slipped away too quickly, of loneliness — paraded the corridors of my mind.
Sunlight was edging through my slatted window blind when I finally dozed off, only to be wrenched into wakefulness almost immediately, or so it seemed, by my alarm radio switching itself on. Now I sat with my hands round a mug of coffee while Warren cheerfully prepared scrambled eggs and toast.
‘I’ll be getting out of your hair this morning,’ he said. ‘I’ll hitch to Glastonbury — the Isle of Avalon.’
‘Why not make your base here for a few days?’ I heard myself suggest. ‘I’m so under the gun with my novel I haven’t time to cook and anyway I can’t even boil an egg. If you looked after that department …’
I knew that it was not just decent meals I wanted; after my experience in the night I did not want to be alone with my neurotic fears about an impending breakdown. With someone else staying at Whispering Corner I would have to make the effort to remain normal.
‘That sounds good to me,’ Warren said. ‘To tell the truth I’m a bit tired of youth hostels and thumbing lifts from smart young salesmen in their Sierras. I’d like to be in one spot for a bit, and what could be better than this place? Funny, I feel I almost know it.’
He looked thoughtful, then added: ‘If you’re sure it’s OK by you, I’ll earn my keep. I’ll have a go at the jungle out there and see if we can make a garden of it.’
Over breakfast Warren turned the conversation to the film of my book The Dancing Stones.
‘Did a television company buy the rights off you?’ he asked.
‘No. A chap called Charles Nixon, who had been involved in the film world and wanted to try his hand at producing, approached me with the idea of forming a company to make it ourselves. He said he had the right contacts and I had the copyright, so why let some big company do it and take the profit? I agreed, and we formed a hundred pound company called Pleiades Films.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Yes. I agreed that he should have sixty per cent of the shares because he’d be putting more time into the venture.’
‘Must have cost a lot.’
‘I put some cash into it, and Charles managed to arrange an overdraft with the Regent Bank. We both worked without salary. We hired a director and a camera crew and went round the country filming megaliths.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
I laughed, remembering the problems that had beset us.
‘No film is ever easy. I certainly enjoyed my part in it, though. Writing is a lonely business, and getting involved with a group of people dedicated to a creative project made a pleasant change. Once the team got together it was like an instant family. Great fun.’
‘Is Pleiades going to make any more films?’
I shrugged. ‘Unfortunately Stones did not live up to Charles’s expectations. It never sold in America, which is essential if a film is to be profitable these days, so we never made anything out of it. What it did earn was swallowed up by the production costs. In fact I believe there’s still a small overdraft, but Charles said that’ll be cleared by repeat fees and odd sales to cable or satellite television.’
I finished my coffee. It had been pleasant to breakfast with company, and the anxiety caused by the odd happening in the early hours had gone. I rose, intending to go up to my study, but once more the Imp of the Perverse pounced.
‘Are you any good at picking locks?’ I asked Warren, and explained about the room I had not yet entered.
‘Sounds interesting,’ he said. ‘Who knows what we might find in a sealed room?’
‘A skeleton with a poniard in its ribs sprawled over a table strewn with yellowed cards,’ I suggested.
We collected the few tools I possessed and I led him to the top of the house. He set to work on the old-fashioned lock, while I pondered on what I should write that morning. Having done my scene-setting, the next thing was to introduce the legend of the whispering and bring in Lorna, the girl with whom Falco would become emotionally involved who would share with him the increasing terrors of the old house, to be heralded by a mysterious murmuring. I considered various ways of introducing her, and found improbabilities in all of them. Then it occurred to me that I might be able to salvage the opening scene from the abandoned Ancient Dreams.
‘Got you!’ I heard Warren exclaim in triumph as the lock surrendered with a metallic snap. ‘You can make your entry now.
But the white gloss paint which Hoddy had used on the woodwork still held the door fast to the jamb and we had to throw the combined weight of our shoulders against it. The result was that the door suddenly gave way and we toppled into the stuffy room like a couple of Keystone Kops.
There was a patina of dust everywhere and the tightly shut window was so begrimed that daylight filtered through but dimly.
‘No skel
eton of a murdered gambler,’ said Warren, ‘but that’s interesting.’
A brass telescope stood in front of the window. It was a beautiful example of Victorian craftsmanship with the legend ‘Norbury and Poole, Optical Mfs., Liverpool’ inscribed on its barrel. When I examined it I found that it was securely clamped on its tripod so that it pointed beyond the garden. I rubbed part of the glass pane with my handkerchief in order to see what it had been aimed at, but when I went to look through the telescope I found that the eyepiece was missing.
‘Miss Constance’s father must have done his stargazing from here,’ I said. ‘He’d get a good view of the southern sky.’
‘That telescope would be worth big dollars to an antique collector,’ said Warren. He threw himself into an easy chair in the corner and a faint haze of dust rose from its cretonne cover. ‘The old girl must have used this as a sitting room,’ he said, indicating an ornate blue, gold-rimmed cup and saucer, a brown stain in the bottom of the cup being all that remained of coffee which had never been finished. I looked at a framed photograph on the discoloured wall of a young man in First World War uniform posed in front of a studio backdrop of a cataract, rocks and ferns, and I experienced a vague sense of guilt as though we had broken into something sacrosanct.
Beneath the photograph of the soldier stood a small cabinet. I opened it and saw that it contained several lacquered boxes, some bundles of papers tied in old-fashioned red tape and a leather-bound book embossed with the words ‘My Autographs’. These relics summoned up a mental picture of Miss Constance sitting up here alone with the mementos of her past. I felt it would be wrong to see what trinkets the lacquered boxes contained or read the messages from long gone friends in the autograph book. But a loose sheet of lined and yellowing paper caught my eye because it had a poem written on it in pencil. I read:
Those swift-sped days of freedom now are gone,
Those hours of joy are but a memory,
The muse can come no more, she is alone,
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