‘I can’t. I’m nearly twenty-eight. A child could adapt, but not a grown man, with a mind made small by a restricted upbringing by a stupid and probably unbalanced old woman. They’ll be rich, confident people and I wouldn’t fit in just because our blood is the same! She ruined my life and when she told me, with that silly grin on her face, she expected me to be pleased! Can you believe that? She thought I’d thank her, tell her how glad I was she had stolen me from my family!’
He sneered and Rosemary looked into the face of a stranger.
‘She honestly believed that when she explained how much she loved me that day, when the sun shone on my dark curls and I – a baby of only a few weeks – looked at her with what she called “recognition”, she honestly believed I’d thank her.’
Rosemary didn’t know what to say. She sat there hardly daring to breathe as his face showed the torment within him. Then he suddenly rose and ran from the house, out into the mist of the late-autumn dawn.
Across the stream, Larry sat dozing. He and Huw had spent several hours discussing with complete truthfulness their thoughts on the mysteries surrounding Rosemary and the second cottage in the row and coming to the same conclusion, had agreed to combine forces to protect her. Larry had abandoned his watch during the night when he thought Rosemary was safe and set the alarm on his watch for six-thirty. He didn’t see Gethyn enter number two and didn’t stir when Gethyn ran out and headed for the church.
Rosemary guessed where Gethyn was heading. Taking an anorak she ran after him and was in time to see him hacking at his mother’s grave with a post torn from the fence surrounding the small graveyard. He was muttering, ‘Stolen child, stolen child’, his face a swollen red mask of fury. She was afraid, then, to approach him but she stood close by and waited for the fury to subside.
19
Larry woke guiltily to see Rosemary’s door wide open and, running across the footbridge, realised to his alarm that she wasn’t there. He ran to find Huw and together they searched the area. First they went to Gethyn’s house and that too seemed to be deserted. Huw decided to look in the hills in case they had gone for an early walk.
‘The car is there, so they can’t be far,’ Huw said. ‘You stay close by and whistle if she appears so I know to come back.’
Larry went into Gethyn’s house.
The door was locked but he forced a window without any difficulty.
He went from the small, overfilled front room in which he found himself, across the hall and into the main living room. The place was such a clutter that he despaired of finding anything to help him in his search for information. But when he opened the large cupboard that stood out from a corner in an untidy way, he gasped with shock.
It was filled with electronic equipment. He recognised several tape recorders, some machines that looked like radio receivers.
A large-volt battery stood against the wall behind the couch, connected to something that disappeared through the wall below the level of the skirting board. Cursing his ignorance in such matters, he blundered around the room wondering what to make a note of and how to deal with what he had found.
Seeing everything, yet understanding nothing, he knew that if he wasn’t careful he might lose the advantage he had been given. Somehow he must record what he’d found in case something happened, like being caught and treated like a thief.
He tried to calm his mind and take a cool look at what he had found. He looked at the boxes of tapes, picked one at random and stuck it in his pocket. He felt bemused by what he had found. In his wildest imaginings he hadn’t thought of anything as complex as this. He stood looking at the cupboard with its boxes and wires spilling out, but not seeing what it all meant.
He shook his head to clear his mind, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs, ran his hands through his hair and began again.
At once a slight tear in the wallpaper caught his eye. An examination showed it to be a tear on three sides of a square.
Lifting the flap that had been created, he saw it was hiding a hole that had been drilled through the shared wall, right to the wallpaper in Rosemary’s room.
A slight touch with a pen and he was through with a view of her room, too small to be used for spying, but good enough, he guessed, to hold a microphone attached to a recorder. All the time he had been living there, Gethyn had been watching and listening.
* * *
Rosemary could see from the drooped shoulders and the exhaustion in the lines on his face that Gethyn had come out of the rage that had engulfed him. She waited until he turned and looked at her then walked towards him slowly, but trying not to show her fear of his returning to the anger of a few moments ago. To her relief he smiled and when he spoke, his voice was low and gentle.
‘That’s been building up ever since my mother told me about how I became Gethyn Lewis,’ he said, taking her hand and slipping it through his arm. ‘I’m sorry you witnessed it but so very glad you didn’t go away. Just knowing you were there helped me cope with it.’
‘I have to go, Gethyn,’ she said, trying to keep her voice light. ‘If you’re sure you’re all right, I have to get ready and leave for work. Walk back with me will you?’
He held her, stopped her from walking on and said, ‘I know you don’t like me saying it, Rosemary, but I love you and feel our destinies are linked. If you would tell me you feel the same, the way I came to be here doesn’t matter. To think that I was taken from a street in Aberystwyth all those years ago and brought to live in the house next to your grandmother … doesn’t it seem like fate? You can’t deny that it was meant to be.’
He was holding her hand and squeezing her arm against him so tightly she began to feel the pain of it. His grip was like a clamp, threatening to stop the blood from coursing around her body. His eyes were wider than usual, giving his usually gentle face a fanatic stare. She began to be afraid. Instead of the negative answer she intended to give, she said, ‘I do know what you mean, Gethyn. Fate takes a hand and we hardly realise it most of the time. Only in very exceptional circumstances do we see clearly how our future is mapped out. Tortuous threads lead us to the here and now, and we accept what the day offers without considering how we reached our position, our—’
‘Destiny,’ he said softly.
‘But Gethyn, I really must go now. We can’t have me being given the sack, can we?’ She pulled away from him and he released her arm after a few moments with a puzzled look, as if he hardly knew it was there. Or perhaps had not expected her to want to be free, she thought with a shiver of apprehension. His tenseness was unnerving her and she was glad when he looked at her with his face returned to normal and said, ‘Go on, my darling. I want to wander around here for a while and think about what we do next. You know, don’t you, I’d never have let you go, not to the American. Somehow I’d have prevented you leaving. You belong here, with me, and this is where we’ll stay.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said, praying he would believe her lies.
Gethyn watched her go but instead of wandering as he had stated as his intention, he took a short cut down through the dangerously steep, wooded hillside, where boulders and ravines blocked the path of the inexperienced. He jumped over the fencing where it was low and was back at his door long before Rosemary, who had walked the usual way, had even come in sight of the cottages or sound of the stream.
She sensed the emptiness of the cottage long before she reached it. Without Larry there it was no longer a home. But she had to face the fact that Larry had lost patience with her and was gone. She was alone and the word, ‘alone’, seemed a more emotive word than ‘deranged’, she decided. She could escape from a deranged neighbour but not from being alone. ‘Alone’ represented a lifetime without Larry.
* * *
Larry was looking, with gradual understanding, at the collection of equipment gathered in the living room of Gethyn’s house.
He had searched the walls by smoothing the wallpaper with his hands; had been ho
rrified to find a second hole drilled through the wall. Gethyn had been listening to their conversations and intimacies both in the living room and the bedroom.
Returning to the ground floor, reeling with the shock of the discovery, he began to untangle the intricacies of the wires and recording devices with greater determination. He daren’t try listening to one of the tapes although the idea was tempting; if anything were disturbed, Gethyn would be sure to guess. He felt in his pocket but decided to keep the tape he had taken from one of the boxes. He had to take away something to show the police. He daren’t stop and listen to what it contained, it was hardly likely to be a fairy story!
The first sound at the front door made him freeze and he stood half hoping that whoever it was would go away, the mailman perhaps? But the key, finding the lock and turning with a swift movement, unlocked his muscles and brain as well as the door and he fled into the only cover he could find, the closet under the stairs. As he pulled the door to, Gethyn entered the living room.
* * *
Rosemary knew as soon as she went inside and threw the bolt that she couldn’t go to work that day. She wouldn’t ever come into the house again if she left it now. She looked at the time and decided she would catch Megan before she left for work. She hadn’t intended to offer more than the mild excuse of a headache, but the friendly voice on the other end of the line soon had the story pouring from her.
At number one, there was a click, and reels began to turn.
She described the sensation of fear when she realised the depths of Gethyn’s instability, and ended by telling her friend that however long it took, she would find Larry. Megan listened to her and promised to both make her excuses that day, and help her search for Larry.
‘Although I don’t know where we start, do you?’ she said.
‘I think he went a long way away,’ Rosemary said. ‘His car isn’t here and from the way he stormed out yesterday, I don’t think he’d have stopped until he’d put a couple of hundred miles between us. I’ve been such a fool.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! How could he expect trust when he was so lacking in it? He still hasn’t told you why he’s here, remember. Are you really sure enough of him, even now? He’s kept you in the dark about so much of his life.’
‘There’s a good reason and he’ll tell me when he can. I haven’t been the most confidential person, have I? He’s asked me to keep a secret and I’ve told Gethyn. And the key. We made such a fuss, getting the locks changed and I, in my stupidity, gave a spare, as I’d always done, to Gethyn. And now it seems that Gethyn’s, well, deranged.’
‘Should you be talking like this now, if Gethyn can overhear?’
‘It’s all right, I left Gethyn up on the hill; I’d hear him if he came back. The house is empty so he can’t be listening to me. But I will be careful once he’s home. Megan, it’s very frightening.’
‘Want me to come, love?’
‘No. Thanks, but I have to face this or be a coward for the rest of my life.’
‘Don’t open the door, whatever you do.’
‘Not a chance!’
* * *
Larry was watching from the partly open door of the cupboard, wondering how long he could stay in such a cramped position without straightening his legs. Gethyn was standing with his back half towards him, his dark face in profile. He was watching the turning spool on a large tape recorder. Larry heard the click as it stopped and saw Gethyn press the button to begin to play it.
His own voice came clearly, and he was able to relive the quarrel he had contrived with Rosemary. It sounded good and from the way Gethyn was now smiling, he was satisfied too. Larry hoped he had convinced the man that he and Rosemary were finished. Her safety, her very life, might depend on it.
Gethyn played the quarrel over and over again and Larry waited, dreading discovery. The stiffness of his limbs began to trouble him and he hoped he could manage not to move while Gethyn was so close. The need to stretch made him lose his concentration and he was jerked from thoughts of his discomfort by a low growl of anger from Gethyn.
The recorder had stopped repeating the quarrel and Gethyn had allowed the tape to run. He had reached the conversation between Rosemary and Megan. Larry went cold as he saw the change in Gethyn’s expression. Rosemary was pouring out the story of the encounter at the graveyard, and her thoughts that Gethyn was ‘deranged’. She spoke emotionally of her love for Larry, and this enflamed Gethyn and made him growl, low in his throat. His hands twitched and he kept mouthing the words, ‘the American, the American’, and Larry feared for his own life.
How could he escape? Larry ran all the possibilities through his anxious mind. He daren’t show himself, not now he knew how much Gethyn hated him. In his confused mind, the man was obviously blaming him for taking Rosemary from him; he wouldn’t be persuaded that even without Larry’s arrival, Rosemary would never have loved him.
Talking to Gethyn would not be the solution, especially if he showed himself as an intruder, who had uncovered his secrets. He settled for a long wait, dreading the possibility of moving and making a sound, or of the dusty surroundings creating the need to sneeze.
His heart almost failed him when Gethyn began to step over the piles of clutter towards him. He held his breath, expecting the door to be flung open and be dragged from his hiding place but the man went past the cupboard and climbed the stairs, his footsteps creaking the boards above him.
It was now or never. Larry shot out of the cupboard and, half imagining seeing Gethyn staring down from the stairs, he reached the kitchen and looked frantically at the door. If it was bolted then he wouldn’t get out without being heard, but miraculously, and typically, it wasn’t even locked. He turned the brass knob and escaped out of the house into the clean, crisp air.
Above him, he heard the chain being pulled in the bathroom and on weak legs he reached the back door of Rosemary’s house and fumbled for his key. If it was bolted he could make his excuses, better that than be seen running like a bat out of hell down the side of Gethyn’s garden.
Gethyn’s voice called to him and nervousness made him drop the key. Bending over to find it gave him a few seconds to recover. He pretended to have just locked the door.
‘Women!’ he said. ‘They want to own you, every inch. They give you the runaround then expect you to apologise. I’ve had it up to here with this one. Hell, they expect too much of a guy, don’t you think, Gethyn?’
‘I think wicked women should be punished,’ Gethyn said quietly.
‘Hell, don’t I just agree! Well, I’ll be off, and glad to shake the dust of this place off my shoes.’ He edged away from Gethyn, intending to make for the bottom of the garden and the lane beyond the fence, but Gethyn stopped him.
‘What d’you think is the right punishment for wicked women, then?’
‘Leave ’em flat, man. If there’s no future in it, get away and as far as you can.’
‘I mean really wicked.’
The last thing Larry was capable of was a philosophical discussion, and unnerved as he was, he said the first thing that came into his head.
‘Some need their brains blowing, some need a kick up the ass. Some want locking up. But an ordinary quarrel, well, I guess it’s best to move right away and that’s what I intend doing, right now.’ He hurried down the path and out of the gate on legs that seemed to be made of unset jelly, and once outside, he leaned on the wall to recover.
Gethyn went back inside and began to sort through the untidy collection of unlikely items he would need to punish the American with for pushing his way into his life and for hurting Rosemary. Pulling the cloth off a low table, he pulled from beneath it, where it had been hidden by the folds of the cloth, the box of fireworks he had bought and never used.
He gathered together a light bulb, some electric fittings, a file, some tubing and a length of electric cable. The punishment should be aimed at Rosemary, women were the evil ones, but now it had to be the American. Larry was the only
suitable target. That was much more satisfactory. Rosemary wasn’t really wicked, she was only weak and soon, she’d belong to him. His eyes glowed with an excitement and his face showed a contented smile as he began his preparations.
Larry walked across the fields to collect his car that had remained undisturbed since he had hidden before his sojourn in Rosemary’s loft-space. Driving carefully out of the muddy field, he made his way into town. He hoped Rosemary was at work, he needed to convince her of Gethyn’s insanity and he needed to do it fast, before she went home. Unaware that he had been close to her as he had left Gethyn’s house, he drove away from her and went to the library.
‘She’s at home,’ Megan told him and he groaned with frustration.
‘I can’t go there and I can’t phone her,’ he said. ‘If Gethyn sees or hears me, there’s no knowing what he’s capable of doing.’
‘Police,’ Sally said firmly and she reached for the phone.
‘No!’ His hand went out to stop her. ‘I want to get Rosemary away from there before he’s warned. Can you get a note to her?’ he asked and when Megan agreed to go during an early lunch-break, he added, ‘And warn her not to discuss anything while she’s in that house. That sonofabitch listens to everything that goes on there, and I mean everything!’
Sally found him some writing paper and he wrote down his reasons for coming there, telling them both the story first in case the note was, for some reason, not read. He admitted that he had overheard her telling Barbara at a New York party where she lived and had acted on it by following her to London and faking an introduction by pretending to be a stranger there.
‘I promised my mother that one day, I’d go to Aberystwyth and search for my missing brother; the coincidence of Rosemary belonging in the area was too good to miss,’ he said, as he hurriedly wrote down his explanations.
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