by Prey (lit)
"It was an orphanageso that poor children from the East End of London could come out here and live by the seaside."
"Now you come to mention it, I think I've heard of it," I told her. "Didn't they call it the Billings Home, to start with?"
Doris nodded. "That's right. And it was very well thought of. Even Queen Victoria came to visit. But after two or three years, old Mr Billings died; or was killed; nobody quite knows. They say that something really awful happened to him. Young Mr Billings took over the orphanage, and after that it was all different. There were comings and goings of peculiar people; and there was one fellow who was supposed to visit Fortyfoot House and he had a face that was covered in brown growths, that nobody could stand to look at. That's what my mother used to say. She used to frighten me half to death with her stories, when I was little!
"Then one yearI don't know what year it wasall the orphans died, in two or three weeks, nobody ever found out why. There was supposed to have been a night when there was all kinds of noises and strange lights up at the house, and people shouting in terrible loud voices that nobody could understand.
"The next morning young Mr Billings was found absolutely raving mad, that's what they say. Absolutely raving mad. He said he'd been to another world and seen things more terrible than any human beings had seen before. He got worse, madder and madder. Three years later they locked him up at Newport but he hanged himself in his cell, and that was the end of him.
"But ever since then, everybody who's lived at Fortyfoot House has complained of the noises, and the lights. I've seen them myself, and I know why the Tarrants moved out."
I gave Liz a long, wry look. This story was sounding more like the Ancient Mariner every minute. Good for the tourist trade. Good for a late summer's evening, when the shadows began to fall long. But it made me feel reassured that if there was anything odd about Fortyfoot House, it was its potent atmosphere, its strong feeling of being connected to the past, its dereliction. Nothing to do with ghosts or lights or "things more terrible than any human beings had seen before."
I gave Doris a fiver and told her to keep the change.
As we left the Beach Café, however, she came to the front gate of the flint-walled garden and said, "Keep your eyes open, you know; and have a care. And if you see a bright light, then I would run for dear life, if I were you."
"Thanks for the tip," I told her, and took Liz's hand.
We climbed the steep path back to the gate. The morning was hot now, and there was a strong smell of melting tar and nettles. We walked under the trees and across the bridge and back up the garden. The house looked stranger than ever in the rippling heat; as if it were no more substantial than a painting, lit with bright lights.
Liz paused as we walked up the garden, and shielded her eyes against the sun.
"Do you take in lodgers?" she asked.
"I don't know. I don't know whether I'm allowed to."
"No, no. I wasn't asking for me. It was just that I saw somebody looking out of one of the upstairs windows."
I stopped, and shielded my eyes, too. As far as I could see, the windows were all black and empty.
"Which window?" I asked her.
"Therethat one there, right under the roof."
"And what did they look like?"
"I don't know. Pale, I suppose."
"Pale?"
"Well, white. Really white. It might have been a reflection." She looked around. "It might have been a seagull, you know?"
We reached the house. Liz held out her hand and said, "Well, then. Thanks for the drink, and the supernatural experience. I'd better get on now, before somebody else crashes that woolshop."
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. "You could always stay here, I suppose."
She shook her head. "You've got your own problems. You don't need mine, too."
"I don't know. I think I'd be glad of the company."
Liz shrugged. "I'm not actually looking for any kind of relationship. Not at the moment."
"Of course not. I'm not either. It would be strictly no strings attached. Just you and me and Danny and young Mr Billings."
"Oh, don't!" she shuddered. But then, smiling, "All right, then, that would be nice. No strings attached. I can cook, though. If you pay for the ingredients, I don't mind cooking. You ought to taste my chili."
"That would make a change. Ever since Janie and I split up, I've been living off Indian takeaways. Even my best friends call me biryani-breath."
Danny came out of the house furiously winding an egg-beater. It was either a twin-screwed motor-boat or a double-barreled Gatling-gun.
"Danny," I asked him, "what would you say if Liz came to stay with us? Would you mind?"
Danny stopped winding. He thought about it; and then he said, "All right," and went running off.
I took Liz's elbow and showed her back into the house. "Let's find you a room."
We climbed the stairs and walked along the corridor. There were seven empty bedrooms, but only three of them had beds, and only two of the beds had mattresses. Liz bounced up and down on them, and then decided to take the room opposite mine. It had no other furniture, apart from a cheap varnished nightstand and a grubby-looking Parker-Knoll armchair, but she didn't seem to mind. I suppose that anything was better than an abandoned woolshop.
"We can do it up, paint it, and find you some curtains," I said. "There, lookyou've got quite a decent view of the front of the house, and the driveway."
She dropped her duffel-bag on to the bed. "This is terrific. I could put some posters up."
Together we went back along the corridor. "You didn't have to do this, you know," she said, over her shoulder. "And if you ever get sick of me, at any time; then don't suffer in silence. Just say 'out,' and 'goodbye,' or even 'bugger off.' I won't mind."
She went downstairs ahead of me, still talking. As I passed the small attic door, however, I was sure that I heard a scratching noise, as if some heavy animal had been pressed against the other side of the door, but (on hearing us approaching) had now rushed swiftly and quietly back upstairs.
Into absolute darkness; where it waited; where it listened. I hesitated on the top stair, with my hand on the newel post. That noise had given me a cold quick shudder of irrational but terrible loathing. It reminded me of the rats that I had encountered in the sewers of Islington, but much bulkier, and if it were possible, dirtier.
Liz stopped on the corner stair and looked up at me. "Anything wrong?" she asked me. "You've gone all grim."
"I think I need another drink," I told her, and followed her back down to the kitchen.
4 - Rat Catcher
Liz and Danny went shopping before lunch, to buy bread and ham and tomatoes. After they had gone, I sat in the huge empty lounge, in the dusty sunlight, and telephoned Isle of Wight Council.
"I've got a rat. Or it could be squirrels. But it sounds like a rat."
"Well . . . I'm sorry. We don't deal with rodents any more. It's all part of the cutbacks. You'll have to have that done privately."
"Can you suggest anybody?"
"Near Bonchurch? You could try Harry Martin. He lives in Shanklin Old Village, that's not far away."
"You don't happen to have his phone number?"
"No . . . don't think he's got one, to tell you the truth."
Liz made a picnic of Cheddar cheese and ham sandwiches, which we ate on the lawn under a hot hazy sky. Liz did most of the talking: and she was open, and straightforward, and genuinely funny. She wanted to work in local government. She wasn't a Marxist-Leninist but on the other hand she wasn't Margaret Thatcher 2. She believed that she could make a difference. "I really believe that I can make a difference," she enthused; and I thought, of course you do. Cynically, perhaps, but not unkindly. Everybody of your age thinks they can make a difference.
Liz said, "I just want to be a genius, that's all. A famous genius. I want to appear on television with a fake German accent, discussing the social con
dition."
"And what is the social condition?"
She lay back on the old brown curtain that I had dragged outside to use as a picnic-blanket; and swigged cold Frascati straight from the bottle. "The social condition is that men treat women as goddesses until they catch them. Then they exploit them, abuse them, beat them and vilify them. And the more they exploit them, abuse them, beat them and vilify them, the more women enjoy it."
"Do you enjoy it?" I asked her.
"No. No way. But then I haven't been caught."
"Not all men are boorish wife-beaters, you know."
"The ones that are worth having are. That's the terrible irony."
I sat up, and watched Danny playing close to the fishpond. "Be careful, Danny! That's deeper than it looks!"
"You really adore him, don't you?" Liz asked me, with one eye closed against the sunlight.
"Of course I do."
"But you don't love his mum?"
"In a way, still, yes. But what's the use? She's living in Durham with some bearded fart called Raymond."
Liz nodded. "I know what you mean. I knew a chap called Raymond once. He was useless. When he was at school he used to give all of his dinner-money to the League of Pity; and then go around scrounging other people's sandwiches. He thought he was a saint."
"Perhaps he was a saint."
Liz laughed. "Some saint. After he left school, he got caught on a warehouse roof in South Croydon, nicking tellies."
I finished my sandwich, took the bottle of wine, and swallowed a large chilly mouthful. "I've got to go to Shanklin Village this afternoon, to talk to a ratcatcher. Or 'rodent-operative', as they call them these days."
"Can I come?"
"I'd rather you looked after Danny. You wouldn't mind doing that, would you?"
Liz smiled, and shook her head. "I'd love to. He's really sweet. He asked me if I loved you. I think we're going to get on well."
"Do you have any younger brothers or sisters?"
Her smile faded, and she brushed back her hair. "I used to have a younger brother called Marty. But we had a fire. You know, one of those old Aladdin paraffin-stoves. It fell over and he got burned. He was only four. My mum and dad went practically crazy."
"I'm sorry," I said, as gently as I could.
She made a moue. "It couldn't be helped."
"What do you think about Doris's story?" I said.
"About old Mr Billings and young Mr Billings? I thought it was great. But you always hear stories like that about empty houses. There used to be a house down our road like that. It was called 'The Laurels.' The old woman who lived in it died of cancer; and all of us kids used to think that you could still see her face pressed against one of the upstairs windows, really white, with white hair, and she would be screaming at the children to get out of her garden, just like she used to do when she was alive. Only you couldn't hear her, behind the window. We used to scare ourselves stupid."
"I saw somebody this morning," I said. "I was looking through the chapel window, over there, and I saw somebody standing just about here, on the lawn."
Liz closed her eyes. "Come on, David, it could have been anybody."
It was good to hear my name spoken by somebody else's lips. That's the one luxury you really miss when you're alone.
Danny always called me "Daddy" and "Daddy" was fine. But there was nothing quite like Liz calling me "David.''
"I'd better go," I told her. "Thanks for the sandwiches."
She lay back on the old brown curtain and looked up at me through slitted eyes. "A pleasure, monsieur. What do you want for supper?"
"How about that chili you mentioned?"
"All right. Can you buy me a tin of kidney beans; and some ground cumin; and chili-powder?"
"Anything else? Some meat might help, mightn't it?"
She laughed; andlooking backI think it was when she laughed at that moment that I started to dismantle my love for Janie. I began to understand that there were other women in the world. Not necessarily Liz, but other women who could laugh and be lovable; and maybe take care of Danny, too.
"Mince," she said. "Not too fatty."
I left her and walked back up the garden toward the house. As I did so, I became aware that there was a pale shape in one of the upstairs windows; a pale shape that was watching me.
I refused to raise my head and look at it. What Fortyfoot House needed was a strong dose of skepticisma denial by sane and sensible people that men in frock-coats and stovepipe hats could be walking around a hundred years after they were dead. A denial that hairy, tittering things could be scampering through its attics; or that pale faces could be peering through its windows.
As far as I was concerned, Fortyfoot House was nothing but a jumble of regrets and memories and hallucinations. Probably not the kind of place where I should have been working, considering my break-up with Janie, and my rather unstable nature. But not evil or haunted. I didn't believe in "evil", not for evil's sake; and I didn't believe in ghosts. I had seen my father in his coffin disappear through the plush red curtains at Worthing Crematorium to the strains of The Old Rugged Cross; and even though I had prayed to God that he would come alive again, I hadn't seen him since. I hadn't bumped into him in Brighton Library, or seen him walking his bull-terrier along the beach, like he always used to. Quod erat demonstrandum, at least for me.
But as I climbed the patio steps (under a High Noon sun) I glanced up again and the pale-faced thing was still therewhether it was a reflection or a curtain or the corner of a mirror or what-the-hell.
I entered the house and collected my wallet and my keys. But I felt like an intruder. Like a burglar, almost. My footsteps sounded unnaturally loud and hesitant. Fortyfoot House was somebody else's house. Not mine, not Danny's; not even the Tarrants .
I looked around, sniffing the dust and the dampness and the smell of fungus in the cellar.
"Hallo?" I called. Then, louder, "Hallo?"
There was no reply. And I said that little prayer that my Sunday School-mistress had taught me, Miss Harpole, with her Olive-Oyl bun and her sun-blinded spectacles.
"Jesus, save me from the teeth
Of things that rise from Underneath
.
Jesus, guard me when I sleep
From creatures formless, from the deep
There were more verses, but I couldn't remember them; or hadn't ever wanted to. To be quite frank, that prayer always used to scare the shit out of me. It had been frightening enough, having the normal nightmares of a five-year-old, without a paper-faced woman in glasses telling me that I could be torn to pieces by shadows that hunched under my bed.
I left the house, without closing the front door behind me. I was sure that I heard a high glassy scratching sound, at one of the upstairs windows, but I walked straight to the car and refused to look back.
I started the engine. My faded bronze Audi was eleven years old and whinnied like a horse before it turned over. I glanced up at the house before I released the handbrake. God almighty, there was bravery for you! But all I saw was dark windows and oddly-angled eaves. I waited one long moment more; and then noisily revved the Audi up the steep graveled drive that led to the main road.
I switched on the car radio as I drove through the narrow, overshadowed lanes that led to Shanklin Village. Cat Stevens singing I'm Being Followed By A Moonshadow; and I joined in, singing, "Moonshadow . . . moonshadow!"
The sun winked and flickered brightly through the leaves.
The ratcatcher lived in a small dazzlingly-whitewashed cottage on a high corner at the edge of Shanklin Old Village; with a garden bursting with red and yellow chrysanthemums and fluorescent geraniums and heavily populated with brown-varnished concrete squirrels with amber glass eyes; and concrete gnomes; and concrete cats; and a miniature windmill; and a miniature wishing-well; and a castle; and a concrete spaniel.
His wife was sitting in the porch in a deckchair knitting something brown and shapeless. A fat woman in pink plasti
c curlers and cotton dress with ship's anchors all over it. On the tiles beside her chair, an empty tea-cup and a plate of digestive biscuits. I stood at the garden gate and the garden was so small I could almost have leaned over it and snatched her knitting away from her. But she looked up and said, "Yes?" as if she hadn't seen me coming.
"I'm looking for Harry Martin."
"Oh, yes? Who wants him?"
"The council said that he still catches rats."
"Oh, did they? Well, he's retired now."
"Is he here?"