I could imagine the scene, the lonely little car with rain sluicing over it and the roar of the wind filling the woodland.
‘I started up the drive,’ Ashley continued. ‘It was steep and slippery and I gave it the gun, with the result that I shot forward … and after that everything’s hazy. I have a picture of tree trunks appearing in the headlights.’
‘Were you dazzled by lights?’
She looked puzzled.
‘Why?’
‘Just a thought.’
‘The lights I do remember after I had come round and climbed out of the Mini were yours.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to interrupt your tete-a-tete,’ said a nursing orderly pushing a trolley. ‘Time for your EEG.’
‘I won’t have to have my head shaved?’ Ashley cried in sudden alarm.
‘You can keep your lovely curls, my dear,’ said the nurse. ‘They just put little microphone things against your head with a dab of special grease to give a good contact. Nothing worse than that.’
‘Goodbye. See you tomorrow,’ I said.
I drove back to Whispering Corner. It was only as I began to type that I reflected that not only was I being served with the material for my book and provided with a perfect model for my heroine, but I had not thought about Pamela for twenty-four hours.
7
There was the sound of surf in my ears. As I opened my eyes the bedroom swam into focus and I realized that it was not rollers creaming up some dream beach but the wind soughing over the treetops. For a while I lay ‘baking’, as they say in the north. Early morning sun streamed through the window, which was still waiting for the curtains I had bought down from London. Such unfinished touches underlined the newness of my tenancy, keeping me aware of the house; its details were not yet blurred by familiarity, which was important if I was to give a vivid picture of it in my novel. The fact that I was borrowing from reality did not bother me; the point was that I was still the storyteller.
There were several pages of careful writing ahead of me, and it was with a sense of anticipation that I sat at my desk a little later. I reread the last few pages I had typed, having reached the point in the story where frightening phenomena, based on those in the ‘Narration’, were soon to occur. To add to their impact on my two characters, I wanted to set them in contrast to the happiness Falco and Lorna feel after they recognize their mutual attraction and become lovers.
I set the scene by describing how Lorna, who remains at Whispering Corner to get over her accident and persuade Falco to take an interest in her book of stories, decides that after a diet that seemed to comprise only boiled eggs and oranges it was time he had a decent meal. She goes to Poole to buy ingredients for a dinner of avocado soup, coq-au-vin, syllabub, and Applewood-smoked cheese to accompany coffee and brandy. To complete it she buys a bottle of champagne.
When Falco comes weary-eyed from his studio early that evening he finds that the table in the dining room has been laid as though for a dinner party for two. Two tall candles are already burning, and Lorna appears in a long grey and silver dress he had not seen before. To enter into the spirit of the evening he changes his usual denim for a dinner jacket. Then, with a Jacques Loussier LP on the turntable, the champagne is ceremoniously opened and a leisurely supper begins.
Through brief snatches of conversation over the dinner table I endeavoured to give more insight into my characters. My own criticism of what I had already written was that Falco and Lorna lacked depth, and when the frightening aspects of the story began I wanted the reader to be able to empathise with them. Falco mentions his childhood, saying that he has no difficulty in working alone because he was an only child, brought up by an aunt in a lonely Cumbrian village. Lorna is more reticent about her background, but she gives the impression that she has been deeply hurt by an ill-starred relationship. Then, having put an old Sinatra record on the turntable, she asks Falco to dance.
‘It’s not my forte,’ Falco replied. ‘So forgive me in advance if I tread on your foot.’
‘It’s quite easy. You just need to hold me and shuffle. We’re not in a Come Dancing Competition.’
I described the dining room of Whispering Corner as I imagined it would look in candlelight, the lone couple dancing on the carpet, their shadows merging on the walls. ‘This beats disco dancing,’ Falco said. ‘Don’t they call it “touch dancing”?’
‘It seems to me our ancestors knew a thing or two after all,’ Lorna laughed. ‘I remember a record, an old seventy-eight that my grandparents used to play, called “Dancing in the Dark”. I loved it as a little girl.’
As they moved close to the table Falco pinched out the candles, and the smell of the extinguished wicks brought back a fleeting remembrance of when he was an altar boy snuffing out the candles after mass.
‘Now you’re really dancing in the dark,’ he said.
Sinatra sang about strangers in the night and Lorna murmured, ‘That’s appropriate,’ as they danced from the darkened dining room into the living room. Here moonlight flooded through the French windows, whose curtains never needed to be drawn in this remote spot. Outside, the garden and the trees surrounding it were etched in silver and black as definite as an Aubrey Beardsley drawing.
As they paused to look out Falco was surprised at the effect holding Lorna had upon him. He was acutely aware of the touch of her slim hand on his shoulder, the exciting osmosis of some rare energy between their bodies.
It had been a long time since he had experienced anything like this. Since the death of his wife the prospect of finding love again was something he had not considered. And though champagne and brandy had played their part in forming this unfamiliar mood, he was far from drunk — on alcohol at least. No, this feeling of intoxication had a different and more fundamental cause.
‘Chemistry,’ he said. ‘It must be chemistry.’
‘That’s an odd remark to make at a moment like this. Unless you mean …’
‘That’s the only expression for what we’re feeling — what I hope we’re both feeling … that the chemistry in each of us is just right. Perhaps I'm presuming too much because of how it affects me.’
She smiled at him as they stopped dancing and stood hand in hand, looking out at the trees. ‘Alchemy. I’d rather call it alchemy than chemistry.’
‘Why?’
‘It has a touch of magic about it.’
‘Then it’s not just me.’
By way of reply she tightened her grip upon his fingers.
‘Out there … it’s rather like one of your illustrations,’ she said. ‘Like the night wood in The Cat o’ Nine Tales.’
‘You’ve a good memory.’
‘Let’s go out. It’ll be like walking into your drawing. We might even meet the Magic Cat.’
He smiled at the recollection of the story he had illustrated.
‘You know what would happen if we did meet him?’ he said.
‘We’d be granted a wish. Let’s go out and try. If the Magic Cat doesn’t appear, there might be a shooting star.’
I paused to reread what I had been writing. I wondered whether I was making it too romantic, yet that is how it was. What I mean is that instead of the sun-dappled garden beyond my window it appeared — to my inner eye — to be drenched in moonlight. And there was a sense of enchantment enveloping my characters on this particular night. I felt that I was merely a reporter in the wings of their stage and I must continue to describe their story as it unfolded.
Telling myself that I could alter the text later if necessary, my fingers sprinted over the dark green keys as I described how they walked into the garden, an elegant couple who as a joke had put on evening wear now in perfect keeping with the theatrical scene.
Hands clasped, they moved across to the hornbeam, the summer airs warm about them, until they paused beneath the ancient yew. From one of its branches a swing dangled on rusted chains. Lorna sat upon the bleached wood seat and Falco stood behind her, his hands on the chains, ready
to launch her into flight. She shivered when the cry of a hunting owl came from the woods and Falco let go of the swing and put his arms round her, holding her breasts. She raised her hands and laid them over his, not to move them but just to hold them. He held his face close to her dark curly hair, his nostrils filled with her perfume.
‘Look,’ she cried suddenly. ‘There’s the Magic Cat.’
Unable to point without letting go of his hands, she nodded to where a white cat was emerging from the shadow of the trees. Tail erect, it regarded them with smouldering eyes.
‘It must be the cat that belonged to the previous owner,’ said Falco. ‘The local kids used to say that she was a witch and it was her familiar.’
‘So it is a magic cat. There’s a hint of witchcraft in the air tonight.’
‘It took to the woods after she died. I’d like to look after it — I feel I owe the old dear something.’
‘I’ll get a saucer of milk, for a start,’ Lorna said. But before she could move from the swing the cat stepped back into shadow and vanished.
‘It’s magicked itself away,’ she murmured, turning to look into Falco’s face. ‘But I did wish. Sorry I can’t tell you what I wished, but perhaps you can guess.’ She paused and then said seriously, ‘James, you told me that there is no one in your life …’
‘That’s true. Not since the death of Irene.’
‘Your wife?’
'Yes. For a long time after she went I seemed incapable of any sort of feeling. One of T. S. Eliot’s hollow men. You see, I felt that I had contributed to what happened. I know it’s very common for people to feel guilt when someone close to them dies, but this was different.’
‘Was it some sort of accident?’
‘You could put it like that. She jumped from an apartment window in Manhattan.’
After a silence Lorna said, ‘You were there?’
‘No. She was out there working.’
As I saw what I had written my fingers froze. Where had those last few sentences come from? I had never intended Falco to have had such a tragedy in his past. Certainly he was a widower, but that was a device to explain his present status and liking for solitude. Something in my subconscious must have wanted to make the story more dramatic, but it filled me with repugnance. Angrily I pencilled out the last few lines and resumed at the point where Lorna tells Falco that she had made a wish.
Chemistry! thought Falco. They knew so little about each other, yet at this moment he felt he had always been aware that she would come — the pre-destined lover-friend.
He also felt that all would take its correct course without worry or tension. It was the first time he had accepted the possibility of falling in love since Irene died, and now all he needed to do was marvel and enjoy.
He leant forward and they exchanged their first kiss. Almost chaste at first, it changed as the chemistry worked within them. Falco’s fingers tightened cruelly as he pulled Lorna closer, and each was aware of the hardness of the other’s teeth behind the pliancy of their lips.
When they drew back they looked into each other's eyes, enigmatic in the moonlight, and then their mouths came together again. This time Lorna did not allow him to crush her, moving her head so that her mouth remained soft against his; then he was aware of the tip of her tongue drawn teasingly across his lips.
They walked back to the looming bulk of the house without need to speak. They both knew that what was about to follow would be inevitable and right, and they cherished this knowledge as though it was some precious wisdom granted only to them.
Again I wondered if I was overdoing the romanticism. I tried to tell myself that as an artist Falco dealt in ideas and feelings, that a century earlier he would have belonged to the pre-Raphaelite movement. And again I decided that it was not for me to judge at this point, but to get it down ‘the way it was’.
I continued typing.
Back in the living room they stood for a moment like a pair of silhouettes against the French windows before Falco turned and poured brandy into two glasses.
He handed one to Lorna and raised the other.
‘A toast,’ he said.
‘To us,’ she answered, and there was the clink of glasses touching.
Falco drained his so quickly that his throat burned. He began to unbutton the row of tiny buttons down the back of her silver and grey dress, then fumbled with the hook of her bra.
‘You’re out of practice,’ she said, amused.
‘True. I’ll need cooperation tonight.’
‘You shall have it.’
Reaching behind her, she unfastened the hook for him and then shook herself free of both bra and dress while he drew in his breath at the sight of her like carved ivory in the moonlight.
‘I please you?’
‘Very much.’
He ran his fingertips gently over the swell of her breasts and felt the firming of her dark nipples. Her fingers were busy with the buttons of his shirt, and then she tugged it open and they felt the heat generating from their skins.
‘Now, at this moment, I want you to know I’m in love with you,’ Falco said in a low voice.
‘Of course. It wouldn’t be happening otherwise.’
He slid to his knees before her, his mouth moving down her skin as he did so.
‘Darling,’ she murmured, her eyes closed as a surge of pure physical pleasure spread through her.
‘Upstairs,’ he said, leaning back on his heels.
‘No, here, in the light of the enchanted garden.’
She sat on the carpet, rolling down a stocking. He sat beside her, his arm over her shoulders, both of them looking out at the silvered trees.
‘I shall remember this scene forever,’ she said, abandoning the attempt to remove her other stocking. Then, the one stocking giving a curious suggestion of a harlequinade, she lay back on the thick carpet, and the sight of her open for him brought Falco upon her.
The gravity they had displayed towards each other was swept away. All that mattered in the world to Falco was to feel himself become part of her; all that mattered to her was to receive her new lover.
Her arms tightened round him as he lay upon her, his mouth hard against hers as he writhed desperately to enter her, earlier gentleness replaced by a force over which it seemed he had no control. Lorna murmured with the pain of his onslaught and released her arm, and he cried out with relief as her hand eased him into the dark warmth that had become the centre of his universe.
Entwined together, hearts racing, they rode their waves of mutual pleasure. Falco closed his eyes and buried his face in the shampoo-scented curls, aware only that the heat which had begun in his loins was spreading like a fever through his body until his nerves and muscles could stand the tension no longer. Behind his eyelids everything seemed to explode in a nova of lights, and Lorna, with a shuddering cry, went limp beneath him in the little death.
When Falco opened his eyes the garden outside was a place of deep shadow. Lorna lay with her head on his arm, her hair soft against his chest. The sweat which sheened them was cold and he felt her shiver. He climbed to his feet, helped her to hers and then, without switching on any lights, led her up to the bedroom. There was no need to say anything as they pulled the duvet over themselves and just before sleep overtook him Falco knew that all he wanted now lay within his arms.
I pushed the typewriter away with a sense of relief. Now the story would roll on more easily. It had needed this happy intimacy as a contrast to what was about to happen.
Having finished the scene, which had developed more easily than I had expected, I went down to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. Waiting for the water to boil, I put my hand in my dressing-gown pocket and felt a crumpled envelope. When I took it out I saw that it was the letter from the Regent Bank which I had thrust away unopened several days ago. I tore it open and saw at once that it was not the usual statement sheet but a letter from the Marchmont Street branch where I had my account. I knew the manager well eno
ugh for him to begin any correspondence with ‘Dear Jonathan’, and it was with uneasy surprise that I saw ‘Dear Mr Northrop’.
I carefully poured out my coffee and read:
‘I am very disappointed that neither you nor your partner Mr Charles Nixon has replied to my earlier letters regarding the account of Pleiades Films. The amount at which the company overdraft now stands is £48,510.15p, which is unacceptable. Therefore, as a joint and several guarantor, you are required to pay this sum into the company account within seven days in order to prevent the matter being passed to our legal department for immediate action.’
I reread the letter and could only conclude that the bank’s computer had gone mad. Several years ago, in order to pay the film laboratory for the final work on The Dancing Stones, Charles Nixon and I had signed joint and several guarantees to secure an overdraft of five thousand pounds. After that the film had been finished and sold and the company, Pleiades Films, had not been involved in any further productions. Now I realized that I had not actually seen a bank statement since then, though I presumed that they had been sent to Charles as managing director of the company. As a shareholder and director I should have been informed of any problem by the bank.
To demand such a ridiculous sum from me within a week could only be an error on the part of the bank. Even if Charles had gone mad with the company cheque book — and although he was an odd character I had never had reason to suspect him of dishonesty — the Regent Bank would surely never have allowed the overdraft to soar to such a figure.
There must be a simple explanation, but nevertheless the letter was worrying enough to put me off returning to work until I had got the matter sorted out. I dressed and then, after collecting all the ten-pence pieces I could find, set out up Church Walk to the phone box in Lychett Matravers.
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