I opened the window and focused on the topmost branch of the hornbeam. I was amazed at the detail of its toothed leaves which appeared in the eyepiece. By carefully turning the brass adjusting wheels, I began an aerial exploration of the woods surrounding Whispering Corner.
For a few moments I was presented with a screen of leaves, and then I came to a gap in the foliage which afforded a glimpse into a natural clearing. For a moment the scene was blurred, but a touch on the focusing control brought sharpness. I saw the ground covered with dark ferns, a pair of brimstone butterflies waltzing through the air in search of blackthorn … and the forms of Ashley and Warren standing opposite each other in the centre of the tiny glade.
His hands were resting on her shoulders and, as I watched his lips moving and saw the expression of concentration on her face, I knew.
On one hand my act of unpremeditated voyeurism repelled me; on the other I found it impossible to take my eye away from the lens in which the two minuscule figures silently signalled the end of my hope that there could be a revival of what Ashley and I had shared before Abu Sabbah.
Warren’s lips stopped moving.
For a long moment the two stood looking into each other’s faces, then slowly — and, I could not help thinking, gracefully — Ashley inclined her head in a gesture of acquiescence. Warren lowered his hands and put his arms round her and she responded by putting hers round his neck. Then, their lips pressed hard together, they sank down on to the ferns. Ashley lay back, her eyes fixed on the sky while Warren raised himself up beside her and, with an air of gravity, carefully unbuttoned her shirt and unbuckled the belt of her jeans.
The telescope revolved on its tripod as I forced myself to thrust it away. At that moment it was not what was about to happen that sickened me but a perverse desire to watch further.
After I had met Ashley I had envisaged her as the heroine of Whispering Corner. Had I romantically come to think of myself as Falco? If so I was a fool. Warren was Falco.
I went back to my study and began to type again.
What else could I do?
*
It was late in the afternoon when there was a knock at my door and I heard Warren say, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Jonathan, but I’ve got to talk to you.’
‘Come in,’ I said, and finished typing my sentence.
He came in, a study of mingled guilt and defiance, and — to my irritation — pity.
‘It’s about Ash,’ he said. ‘It’s very difficult …’
‘No need for it to be difficult,’ I said. ‘I know what’s happened.’
‘But how …’
‘I may be a fool, but I’m not stupid.’
‘But I’ve got to explain. You can’t understand.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it’s so difficult to understand. Betrayal, infidelity, romantic illusion, the need for a sexual work-out … there’s nothing unusual in all that.’
‘Don’t talk like that. Forget you’re a bloody writer for once, will you!’
I shrugged.
‘Sorry,’ he continued in a lower voice. ‘I can guess how you must feel — I’ve been there myself, and with Ashley.’
‘In Australia?’
‘Yeah, in Australia.’ He rubbed his hand across his face. ‘You’ve every reason to think we’re a right pair of bastards but I don’t want to go away with you thinking I made a play for your girl while I was enjoying your hospitality.’
‘What does it matter what I think?’
‘You can say that, but it does matter to me. You’ve been bloody good to me — and anyway I admire your work. What I want you to understand is that Ash and I used to live together. In Sydney we had a flat in The Cross until …’
‘Until one day she ran away?’ I suggested.
‘I guess you got some understanding of her. And you’re right. Her problem has been that she wasn’t able to sustain a relationship. She’d reach a point when something would snap and she’d just have to run.’
‘So that’s why you came to England. You were looking for her?’
‘Not consciously. In fact I didn’t know where she’d gone. At the time I thought it most likely she’d gone back home. But I was so restless I had to do something, and I’d always had an ambition to come to Europe and do a tour of mystical sites.’
‘I can’t get over what a coincidence it was that you should turn up at Whispering Corner, and Ashley should arrive a few days later.’
‘Jonathan, that was no coincidence. Ash had told me so much about the place — you know, her dad used to tell the kids stories about it and their eccentric aunt. The name stuck in my mind, and when I came to England I thought it’d be interesting to see the old house. And when I saw that newspaper item and realized you were living here it was a bonus. The fact that I wanted to meet you because I’d seen The Dancing Stones was perfectly true.’
‘All right. I accept what you’re telling me.’
‘I’m bloody sorry, Jonathan.’
‘Kismet,’ I said. ‘What now?’
‘We’re going to try again.’
I said nothing. Perhaps I should have wished him good luck or said ‘Bless you my children’, but now I just wanted to be on my own. Further conversation would be bathetic.
‘Ash just wasn’t up to saying goodbye to you, so she’s waiting for me in the village. We’ll take the bus to Poole …’ He went on, in his embarrassment giving me an itinerary.
I looked at my watch. ‘The bus will be due soon.’
‘Yeah. Better be on my way.’
He wanted to say something that, from his point of view, would make things right; make him feel that he could leave with a clear conscience because he had been honest with me. He made a movement as though he wanted to shake hands, but I pulled the Olympia towards me. ‘Good luck with the novel,’ he said as he turned to the door.
‘Good luck with Ashley,’ I replied. The door closed and the two people who had shared so much with me at Whispering Corner were out of my life for ever.
*
‘Lights, Jim love,’ called Crispin Smythe, the young unit director, and the cellar leapt into harsh detail as two portable floodlamps were switched on. The camera tripod had been carefully mounted halfway up the steps so that the table which had been placed in front of the entrance to the wine cellar was in full view. On a stool at the bottom of the steps the sound man sat over his recorder with earphones that looked like oversized earmuffs.
‘We can’t waste film recording the whole evening,’ Crispin Smythe whispered to the veteran cameraman. ‘If anything interesting starts to happen I’ll give you the word. Let’s have a few zooms on the faces if they look shocked or startled, and I want a close-up of linked hands when they form the circle.’
‘Whatever you say, Mr de Mille,’ muttered the cameraman.
At the table William Fortune was arranging his group, while in a corner of the cellar, seated on an upturned pail, the Reverend Scott watched the proceedings with such a studied lack of expression that it advertised his disapproval rather than hid it. Only the journalist had recognized him, and had decided the evening might be more interesting than he had expected. Something must be afoot, but he was far too experienced to allow his interest to show.
Falco had introduced the exorcist as Scottie, an old friend who had come to visit him and was so fascinated by the proceedings that ‘I told him it would be all right to watch from a distance’.
William Fortune grunted acquiescence. He was tense with the knowledge that his chance to become a latter-day Harry Price was perhaps only minutes away. The one thing that did not worry him was the possibility that nothing might happen. After the last séance he was confident that there was enough latent psychic power in the house to produce a reasonable manifestation; what he had to concentrate on was stage-managing it to the best advantage.
‘We’re ready to begin,’ he called to Crispin. ‘Whatever happens, keep filming. You should get material tonight that will make you famous.’
‘Fame is not something that interests me,’ he said, taking up his position at the table.
Crispin tapped the sound man on the shoulder.
He pushed back one earmuff. ‘Yes?’
‘You getting the words clearly?’
‘I was.’
‘Splendid, love. Mr Fortune, could you say that again — about not being interested in fame?’
‘Fame is not something that interests me,’ the medium declared. ‘My work is to investigate the phenomena that link the visible world with the invisible, and in so doing to help others …’
When he had finished his speech he called to Crispin, ‘Would you like us to start with a prayer? Might help to get it next to a peak God slot.’
‘No harm,’ Crispin replied. ‘It would help with a Stateside network. We can always edit it out if it doesn’t work.’
Fortune bowed his head. ‘Dear Heavenly Father …’
Sitting across the table from Falco, Lorna caught his eye and hastily looked down as he grimaced his disapproval of Fortune’s performance.
When he reached ‘Amen’, the medium took on the confident professionalism that presiding over hundreds of sittings had imbued in him.
‘Please hold hands in the usual manner and do not break the circle no matter what happens,’ he said. ‘We will now begin. Please sit quietly for a minute and clear your minds in order to be receptive.’
The eight men and women seated round the table bowed their heads obediently. The only sound to disturb the silence of the cellar was the scrape of a match as the focus-puller lit a cigarette.
Fortune raised his head. ‘Spirits from bygone times, tonight we earnestly seek to discover what it is that has brought you back to this house,’ his solemn voice intoned. ‘Grant us a sign that you are with us …’
At that instant Falco felt the table tremble. Then it rose several inches before dropping back to the floor.
‘Did you get that?’ hissed the director.
‘I’m turning,’ the cameraman hissed back. ‘But the lights …’
At his words the floodlights dimmed, brightened, dimmed again.
‘Answer one knock for yes, two for no,’ cried Fortune, a faint flush on his pallid face reflecting his surprise at such a quick response. ‘Are you the spirit of Sir Robert Elphick?’
A knock, as though made by a clump hammer violently striking a plank, resounded through the cellar. In his shadowy corner the Reverend Scott climbed to his feet.
‘Is it because of remorse that you return?’
Fortune’s words were followed by a rataplan of knocks which echoed painfully in everyone’s ears. The sound mixer hastily adjusted his controls while the blows went on and on in a rhythmic frenzy. When the medium attempted to say something they grew even louder as though to drown his words. Then the table began to dance.
First it rose, higher than before so that the sitters were forced to release their handclasps; then, freed from the circle, one end reared up while its weight rested on the legs at the opposite end. Thus balanced it began a parody of walking. Falco was reminded of a circus animal forced up on to its back legs to waddle after its trainer.
When it reached the centre of the cellar it crashed on to the stone flags. The knocking which had reached a deafening climax suddenly ceased, and the lights returned to their normal brilliance.
For a long moment there was silence.
Falco got to his feet.
‘That’s enough, Fortune,’ he declared. ‘You’re making things worse …’
His voice trailed away as the lights faded to such a degree that the cellar was in semi-darkness.
‘Jesus Christ!’ muttered the cameraman, his eye to the viewfinder. It was not an oath but a prayer. The hitherto dark entrance to the wine cellar was filled with luminosity, rather as though a glowing mist was forming within its tunnel-like walls.
The Reverend Scott shouted something which no one heard; all eyes were on the opaque light in which — or so it seemed — indefinable shapes moved. And from the cellar came the sound of voices softly whispering.
No one moved. No one spoke. The whispering grew louder, the words indistinct but their timbre increasingly urgent.
Lorna rose to her feet, her eyes fixed on the doorway. Falco tried to lean forward to seize her arm but it seemed as though all the strength had been short-circuited from his body. He could only stand and watch while Lorna walked forward into the unearthly light.
Suddenly she screamed. ‘The baby! Where have you put the baby?’
She dropped to her knees and turned her head to look over her shoulder — and Falco gasped as he saw that the face of the frantic woman was no longer that of the girl he loved.
*
My fingers were stiff from typing, and the glass of brandy and Perrier stood untouched beside the Olympia. I had poured it out earlier to sustain my effort but as the final chapter of Whispering Corner had developed I had no need for it. I was caught up in the story and I was determined to bring it to the conclusion I had predetermined regardless of any qualms I might once have had. All that mattered in my world was to get the book finished.
The loss of Ashley and the forthcoming loss of my house had ceased to mean anything as I sat in the heat of my study with Mrs Foch curled up beside me. During those hours of concentration I had crossed the line between the everyday world and the reality of my imagination.
I wiped the sweat from my face, hoping that a thunderstorm would soon clear the stifling heat which brooded over the woods. No airs stirred, and far beyond the green sea of treetops a pale grey column rose perpendicular from a hidden stubble burn. I interlocked my fingers, cracked the joints and typed.
As her continuing scream rose above the disembodied voices, the girl began to scratch with her fingers at the earthen floor of the wine cellar.
It seemed that she would make little impression on the hard clay, but — as the cameraman who had zoomed in on the scene was the first to see — the floor itself was changing, loosening and moving of its own accord, spurting upwards in puffs of dirt, cracking and subsiding. It was as though some presence long entombed was stirring.
At the same time a smell, so revolting that it made the petrified watchers gag, issued from the wine cellar. The cameraman, who had done his stint on Third World wars, recognized it for what it was.
Then something — something that nobody could properly describe afterwards, but Falco remembered as pallid and glistening — appeared in the seething earth to reach upwards towards the kneeling woman.
‘Begone, thou hideous demon …’
The Reverend Scott elbowed a path through the petrified spectators as though thrusting his way through a waxworks display. Holding the silver case containing the Host high above his head and intoning the words of exorcism, he entered the wine cellar. The whispering voices died away, the seething earth became still, the luminosity faded and in the main cellar the floodlamps returned to full power.
Falco was the first to move. He ran into the wine cellar, shouldering the clergyman to one side to lift the limp body of the young woman. Carrying her into the harsh glare of the lamps he turned her head to see with infinite relief that her blanched features were those of Lorna.
‘Get her upstairs at once,’ ordered the Reverend Scott. About them people began exclaiming as they do after the shock of an accident. But before Falco could take a step with his burden, a cry of anguish filled the cellar.
William Fortune, face contorted, mouth agape, sprang across the floor and hurled himself up the steps. He collided with the camera tripod. The Arriflex crashed to the floor below and burst open, film spilling out like black entrails.
Electric leads entangled Fortune’s ankles. The cameraman tried to hold him, but with unnatural strength he tore himself free of the cables, plunging the cellar into darkness. The cameraman was hurled after his whirring camera and the medium was gone.
One of the crew produced an el
ectric torch and a minute later everyone was safely in the hall. The door was slammed and bolted on the mephitic cellar.
As Falco laid Lorna on the sofa in the living room the Reverend Scott said, ‘The danger with exorcism is that when evil is cast out it sometimes enters another host. We must find that deluded man before it brings disaster upon him. The poor fool must have realized the risk he ran in order to promote himself …’
‘Will Lorna be all right?’ Falco interrupted.
‘Put her to bed and when she wakes this ghastly business will have receded into the blurred memory of a nightmare. When you’ve done that we’ll search for Mr Fortune.’
I briefly described the fruitless hunt for Fortune, who had taken to the woods, and the departure of the circle members and the film crew who, having got over their initial shock at the manifestations in the cellar, were cursing the destruction of what would have been a sensational film. Falco then sits beside the unconscious Lorna until dawn lightens the western sky.
There were only a few lines left to be written.
Outside it was dark, except for the occasional glimmer of sheet lightning, and suddenly I was utterly weary. The desperate need to finish the book had tapped some hidden reserve of energy, but now I was on the last page it had run dry. I drank the brandy and slowly began to describe how the exhausted Falco leaves Lorna sleeping normally. Treading carefully so as not to wake the Reverend Scott, who has spent the night in an adjoining bedroom, he goes downstairs to make himself coffee. Then, with the steaming mug in his hand, he walks into the garden to breathe the earth-scented air of the woodland.
Although his body ached with fatigue Falco felt at peace. He knew instinctively that Whispering Corner was cleansed and at last he and Lorna were free to get on with their lives.
He looked towards the ornamental urns flanking the stone steps up to the French windows, remembering how on his arrival he had planned to plant them with ivy and geraniums. Well, it was not too late. He turned to the nearest urn and uprooted dried weeds while his mind dwelt on the future.
Whispering Corner Page 31