The Haunt

by A. L. Barker

  Lumsden breathed over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘I seen that poster you did on the Underground. At Chalk Farm. It gets to me.’

  Turning, Charlie saw a lanky youth with a pigtail, wearing a singlet and broken sneakers. Charlie said, ‘I’ve never done a poster for the Underground.’

  ‘I’d know your work anywhere, your name’s all over it.’

  ‘What name’s that?’

  The youth, who couldn’t know, said, ‘Girl and dolphin, woman and fish, the story of evolution.’

  Someone set off the anti-theft device in a parked car. It bleeped distressfully. A man kicked the car and walked on. Charlie murmured, ‘Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings?’

  ‘I’m an artist too,’ said the youth.

  People did say that; once a woman had brought Charlie her ink-blot drawings. Lumsden had followed him home and at Charlie’s door said could he come in and talk.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Painting. How you do it.’

  ‘I don’t know how I do it.’

  ‘I may be using the wrong sort of brushes.’

  Charlie said, ‘Primitive artists did lovely jobs with feathers and chewed sticks.’

  ‘I can’t get my colour temperatures right.’

  ‘Experiment. We all have to.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Try mixing. Some colours are bigger than others.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Not now. I’ve got to pack.’

  ‘Pack?’

  ‘I’m going to Cornwall.’

  Next morning Charlie put his painting gear and a change of clothes in the car. Well-stacked clouds were emptying over NW3. When he switched on the ignition the engine groaned: the groans grew feebler, Charlie fancied he heard a death-rattle. He was no mechanic: the working of an egg-whisk baffled him. His diagnosis was that something must have come loose. He looked, briefly, stirred the tangle of wires with his finger, shut the bonnet and got back into the car as rain began to trickle into his collar.

  Something appeared close against the windscreen – large, with a yellow halo. It dipped and swayed. Charlie made out a face distorted by raindrops. He wound down the window and Lumsden, wearing a yellow sou’wester, put his head through the opening. ‘I’ve brought some of my paintings to show you.’

  ‘Sorry, I haven’t time—’

  ‘They’re my most recent work. I’m trying to use colour the way you and Van Gogh do – so it gets to your guts.’

  Charlie said, ‘I can’t stop now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you and we can talk on the way.’

  ‘No one’s going anywhere until this car starts.’

  ‘Let me give it a shove,’ Lumsden said obligingly. He stowed his pack on the back seat and went round to the rear of the car. Charlie released the handbrake. The car’s front wheel was against the kerb. He shouted, ‘Push!’ Pulling on the steering, he managed to free the front wheel and the car moved. Being on a down gradient, it started to roll, picked up speed. Charlie engaged gear. The engine roused, sluggish but self-motivated; the car completed the downhill run and began to struggle up. Came a cry from behind. Charlie put his foot down, switched on the wipers and was away with a splutter and a cough, the rain reducing to a clear fan on the windscreen.

  Driving along Tottenham Court Road he spared a thought for Lumsden. It had been a narrow escape, but as someone said, if you answer every call for help you say goodbye to a life of your own. And he needed to think. He should have done it before setting out. Faced with the stern realities of a two-hundred mile drive in a dodgy car, already it was looking like weakness which had got him going.

  He stopped for breakfast at a roadside café. It was crowded, but at one table a girl sat alone, reading. He said, ‘Do you mind?’

  She shrugged. Charlie swept crumbs off the chair and sat down. She said, ‘Are you following me?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘You waved to me on Battersea Bridge.’

  ‘I came over Putney Bridge.’

  ‘And tailed me from Barking. In a red Volvo.’

  ‘My car’s a blue Escort. I haven’t come from Barking.’

  She laid down her book, an Erle Stanley Gardner, and looked at him.

  Charlie looked at her. By the way she had put on eye-shadow and tied up her head in a spotted kerchief he would have said she was hippie. Her skin was covered in freckles, a golden confetti concealing all evidence of character and experience. A perfect camouflage of a human face.

  The waitress came for his order. He said, ‘Bacon, sausage, mushrooms, toast—’

  The girl interrupted. ‘Was it an excuse to get into conversation?’

  ‘Mushrooms are off,’ said the waitress.

  ‘Tomatoes, then. And toast and tea. We’re into conversation,’ he said to the girl. ‘What do you want to talk about?’ He was reminded of Lumsden and his colour calories. It would cost a fortune to post back his canvases and anyway Charlie didn’t know his address.

  ‘You talk,’ the girl said, ‘I’m a good listener. Like the cats.’

  ‘What cats?’

  ‘I have a postcard of three French cats with their paws folded, looking at the camera. The caption says it’s more important to listen well than talk well. The cats are listening, but each cat has a different expression: one’s doubtful, it’s saying, “Do you really think so?” The next one’s resigned, says, “I suppose that’s true.” The third’s superior – “I have always known it.”’

  ‘Why French cats?’

  ‘All cats are smart, French cats are smartest. And the caption’s in French. “Bien écouter importe plus que bien parler”.’

  She took her finger off the Erle Stanley Gardner and it promptly shut. ‘Softbacks will be the death of literature. Shall you read a book if you have to sit on it to keep it open?’

  ‘I only read the Digest.’

  ‘I’m talking about books – classics, Eliot, Austen, the Brontés …’

  The waitress brought his breakfast. He poured the last of a bottle of brown sauce over his plate and speared a sausage. ‘So why aren’t you reading Wuthering Heights?’

  ‘I’ve read it.’

  ‘We had it as holiday reading at school,’ said Charlie. ‘When we asked what a wuther was the teacher said it was a powerful emotion.’

  ‘She was right. It’s from the Old Norse for a strong wind, a violent blow, a trembling. It’s the heart of that story.’

  ‘One of the kids, a wide boy, said, “Have you ever had a wuther, miss?” She went scarlet and we all giggled.’

  The girl smiled, scooped the Erle Stanley Gardner into her shoulder bag and stood up. As she walked away Charlie saw that she was wearing Bermuda shorts with the recurring motif of a woman cuddling a big bird.

  *

  The farther west he went, the more conscious he would be of Nina. After Basingstoke was virtually her territory now. Marriage had made him an adjunct. He had supposed it came of being in love, a defect of the quality. But Nina had a chronically enlarged heartscape: people were tempted to disburden in her presence and he had tired of coming last in the procession of strangers’ intimate splendours and miseries. Their own – his and Nina’s – would have been enough, and towards the end of his married life he suspected that the constant reminder of how much worse off other people were was for her a source of strength.

  That and other gnawing doubts had grown into a disquiet which even the good things about his marriage could not quell. And there were many good things.

  He had Nina’s portrait in the boot of the car, a full frontal nude. This was the first time it had left his studio. He had kept it in a cupboard, squeamish about its being seen by other eyes than his. Not from scruples, from wholly erotic considerations: memories.

  Passing the turning to The London Apprentice he thought of John Opie, the 18th-century portrait painter, son of a Cornish carpenter, launched on London as the ‘Cornish Wonder’. Maybe he should go and look at the place. B
ut not now. Now he should do what he had come to do. Find her.

  He remembered the name – ‘Mellilot’ – years ago, seeing it on a gate giving on an avenue of yews and beeches, a chiaroscuro wrought by the blackness of the yews and the jelly-green of young beech leaves. Nina had urged him to open the gate and drive through. He refused. Whereupon she had got out of the car and walked away along the avenue. The beeches, roaring in the wind, flooded her with light, and then she vanished into the webby dark of the yews. He had shouted, ‘Where are you going?’ She turned in a spasm of light and recited, ‘“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley”’ and Charlie settled down to wait.

  Presently, the sky clouded over and the chiaroscuro faded. He had felt sleepy, would have dropped off, but was struck by the thickening and thinning, running out and replenishing of the darkness under the yews. It was surreptitious.

  He opened the car door and called ‘Nina!’ and had regretted it because anyone listening now knew she was trespassing. ‘VATE’ was just visible on the top bar of the gate, the ‘PRI’ having been worn away, presumably by the chafing of a padlock and chain hanging loose from the post.

  Then a car had drawn in behind Charlie’s, a Mercedes with smoked windows. A Rottweiler was at the wheel, its elbow out of the driver’s door, its black lips curled over palisades of teeth, jaws watering, snarling basso profundo.

  Charlie’s own juices had dried up. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back. The dog jumped out and made for him with a business eye. Panicking, he wound up his window, locked the car door, feeling like a rabbit cornered in a biscuit-tin.

  The dog passed without a glance, went to the gate, leaned on it and bore it back on its shoulder until the gate stood wide open. A masterly performance. The dog then returned to the Merc, leaped in through the window and Charlie had the distinct impression that it backed the car into the road. Charlie started up and shot out round it. The Merc accelerated through the gate, rolled on, flattening dandelions and some late bluebells.

  ‘Juggernaut!’ Charlie had shouted, panicking for Nina who didn’t have a biscuit-tin to protect her. The Merc disappeared round a bend.

  Charlie was no hero but he knew what he must do. If he didn’t do it he would have to answer to himself ever afterwards and the answer would be a big minus. He looked for a weapon to use in Nina’s defence and his own, if need be. All he carried in the car in the way of tools was a jack. He had never changed a wheel in his life, the jack was rusted solid. There was nothing else to hand to ward off a pit-bull.

  He was running along the track when Nina reappeared, trailing her bag through dandelions and cow-parsley in an idle way unlike her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ cried Charlie.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘What about the dog?’

  ‘Dog?’

  ‘In the car.’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘It just went along the drive, there was a dog—’

  ‘What’s that you’re carrying?’

  ‘A jack.’

  ‘Have we got a puncture?’

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Charlie took her arm to hurry her.

  She hung back, brushing a head of ragwort with her fingertips. ‘I saw no car.’

  ‘It passed you, a two-tone Merc, with a dog driving.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’ She dusted pollen off her fingers. ‘I think I am too. We’re both crazy.’

  ‘I shan’t feel happy until we’re away from this place.’

  ‘I shan’t feel happy when we are.’

  ‘Nina, please.’

  ‘I’ve fallen in love,’ she said. ‘Deeply, passionately, hopelessly. But it needn’t be hopeless.’

  ‘Of course it needn’t.’ Charlie tried to pull her along. ‘We’ll talk about it over lunch.’

  She shook off his hand. ‘I can do something about it. I must, or I shall never be happy again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was your type.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘The Rottweiler.’ Out of patience, Charlie seized both her elbows and ran her through the gate.

  It seemed she had fallen in love with a house: at the end of the drive, she said, was a ‘heavenly, darling place, out of a dream, set among cedars of Lebanon and daisied lawns’ – she actually said the lawns were daisied – overlooking a pool and old statues representing the rape of the Sabines. They were covered in lichen and had no heads.

  ‘How do you know they were Sabines if they had no heads?’

  You didn’t need faces to know what was going on, she said coldly. She had wanted Charlie to go back with her to look at them. He flatly refused. ‘I’m not going near that dog, it’s a killer.’

  ‘There is no dog. You went to sleep and dreamed it.’

  No use arguing at that juncture. He had hauled her into the car and driven away without waiting to belt up. She twisted in her seat to look back. ‘I intend to have that house.’

  ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘I’ll marry into it.’

  *

  In fact that was what she had done, and Charlie, married to her for ten years, could well imagine how she had done it, although he was not privy to the details. When she had ascertained that Crawford, the owner of the house, was a widower, she divorced Charlie. He prophesied disaster if she wed the house and not the man. She said real estate was an investment. She was cool and businesslike. Charlie supposed that emanated from her prospective bridegroom whom she referred to succinctly as ‘J.T.’ Charlie was not asked to the wedding, but a woman who was told him that J.T. reminded her of Oscar Wilde. It was, she said, a passing resemblance and did not survive conversation with him.

  Searching now for Mellilot, Charlie took several wrong turnings before he found the lane which led to what had become Nina’s drive. He wouldn’t have recognised it were it not for the yews and beeches. Those she could not change. But the wild look was gone – the yellow ragwort and purple loosestrife; the surface had been Tarmacadamed, the chiaroscuro was just black shadow. ‘Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley’ – and tidied it up.

  He turned his car in at the gate and drove on. No need to worry about the dog. Nina did not like dogs, he could rely on her prejudice.

  The drive forked: to the left an archway gave on to a stable yard, to the right topiary, corkscrew hedges and privet peacocks. Beyond was the house.

  Recalling Nina’s rhapsodies – ‘a heavenly, darling place’ – he was struck, not for the first time, by shortfalls between her vision and his. To him this was strait-laced country Georgian, conceding a pediment and floral swags over the second-floor windows. Cedars there were, but the daisies had gone from the lawn. A ride-on mower was even now shaving off the last of them.

  Charlie drove up to the front door. The knocker, an iron teething-ring, made a lot of noise but no one came in answer. He knocked again. A bird flew, cursing, from the eaves.

  The rider on the mower called out, ‘We don’t want double glazing,’ and made fending-off gestures.

  Charlie crossed the grass. ‘I’m looking for Mrs Crawford.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Away.’

  ‘What about Mr Crawford?’

  ‘I am he.’

  ‘J.T.?’

  The man on the mower pouted. Being completely bald, he looked more like a punished baby than Oscar Wilde.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ said Charlie. ‘In my car. Shall I fetch it?’

  J.T. Crawford shrugged and remained seated on the mower. Charlie went to his car and brought the portrait, the full frontal view hidden against his chest. ‘You and I aren’t complete strangers. Your wife used to be mine, we have what you could call a shared interest.’ Charlie smiled friendlily. ‘What does the J.T. stand for?’

  ‘Jeremy Tyrone.’

  ‘I’m Charlie Olssen.’

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’

  ‘Our shared int
erest.’ Charlie turned the picture. Looking at it upside down he thought it really rather good. Even in bright sunlight the morbidezza was rich and bloomy. Bedbloomy. Nina could be voluptuous when she chose, and she had chosen while he captured her pose. In the curve of her hip and upstanding breasts he saw a definite affinity with Alma-Tadema’s Tepidarium. In place of the coy ostrich feather, affectionate treatment had been given to her pubic hair, of which she had a riotous triangle. All the salient points had been made with no loss of mystery.

  Crawford took one look at the picture, ducked, and fumbled the switches on the mower.

  ‘I want you to have it,’ said Charlie. ‘I painted it but it’s yours by conjugal rights.’ He added soothingly, ‘Only you and I have seen it.’

  Crawford kept fidgeting with the mower. His pate was the colour of port wine. ‘It’s suggestive.’

  ‘I was her husband at the time.’

  ‘People might think I did it.’

  ‘Isn’t it good enough? As a work of art?’

  ‘Nothing personal.’

  ‘As a picture it may not be your taste. I don’t know your taste. Gothic, is it? Baroque? Landscape? Still lives – dead rabbit with oysters?’

  ‘I’ve nothing against your work.’ Crawford swallowed. ‘It’s really quite – what will you do with it?’

  ‘I’d like you to have it. You’re the one entitled now. But if you relinquish your claim I’ll be free to offer it for the Academy Summer Exhibition.’

  The blood rushed into Crawford’s ears. ‘How much do you want for it?’

  ‘I’m giving it to you.’

  Crawford climbed off the mower and went across the lawn. He disappeared through the arch into the stable yard.

  Charlie followed. In the yard, paved with professionally distressed stone flags, were fibreglass urns planted with pink hydrangeas, a 1920s lamppost and a horse-trough brimfull of geraniums. In a corner stood a wagonette painted bright blue with yellow wheels.

  Charlie sighed. Uncertain whether to wait or go, he perched on the footplate of the wagonette and gave himself up to thoughts of Nina.

  Painting her in the nude had been a shared experience, surprising them both. He had done it at a time when they were still enveloped in each other. She had overcome her inhibitions so quickly that he had wondered if she actually ever had any. They had come back later.