A Place With Two Faces

by Mann, Josephine

  “Of course she will, I expect your sheets are still there. Anyway, I’ll have hysterics if she shows any sign of being unwilling. I’ll scream and say I can’t sleep without my bodyguard; we non-witches have got to stick together.”

  13

  The Catharsis

  Margaret’s house blazed with light and there was also a dim glow from Nigel’s study.

  “He’s back then,” said Simon. “Well that’s something.”

  “And Margaret’s waited up,” observed Jenny tapping gently with the knocker, for the door was locked.

  “Who’s there?” called Margaret’s voice.

  “Us, Jenny and Simon.”

  The door opened and Margaret, large, white and grotesquely fluffy in a many-layered negligee, waved them in and then shut it quickly behind them, shooting bolts and sliding chains as well.

  “Bernard has been here,” she announced dramatically, “and in a very ugly mood. A vicious mood. He’s furious about his mass and insists that Nigel tipped off the police and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise. He won’t believe that it was just you and Robert. The police have been to see him today and he didn’t like it. I told him that he deserved everything that was coming to him and he didn’t like that either. We had a terrible row and now he’s gone to wait for Nigel to come home. Anything may happen with him in that mood. But I’ve called Robert and he said he’d just seen you and he was coming over.”

  “And you don’t know if my father’s back?” asked Simon.

  Margaret shook her head.

  “I’d better go and see.”

  “Well do be careful. Don’t have anything to do with Bernard until Robert comes; he’s in a very ugly mood.”

  “I’ll just see what’s going on and bolt back here if I’m attacked,” said Simon. “Have the portcullis ready!”

  Jenny hurried to the dining room window and, pulling back the curtains, watched him cross the courtyard. He peered into the other house through the French windows.

  Margaret, joined by Jenny, opened the sash window and called, “Simon, what’s happening; is he there?” Simon came halfway back.

  “Yes, there in the house somewhere, I can hear them having a terrible slanging match. I’d better go in, it might come to blows.”

  “I think we’d better come over, as witnesses,” decided Margaret. “I’ll just get a coat.” She hurried upstairs. Jenny waited at the window. Her crying need to sleep had passed, but she felt withdrawn and unreal, a stranger watching her own life from some outside vantage point. Margaret reappeared. She was wearing a long and ancient mink, which wasn’t quite as long as the negligee, and a pair of short, bright-yellow rubber boots.

  “No sign of Robert yet?” she asked as she opened the front door.

  They crossed the courtyard and went in at the study window. The room was empty, but hearing angry voices they went on through to the unlit hall. There was a light upstairs and they could see Simon standing in the gallery. They hurried up the stairs to join him at the bedroom door.

  Bernard was shouting a stream of confused accusations; suddenly Nigel’s ice-cold voice interrupted him.

  “For the sixth time, I had no contact with the police until they telephoned me this morning to ask if the coven was in anyway connected with last night’s disturbance. I mentioned no names, but stated unequivocally that if any of our members had taken part it would be against the laws of Wicca and my express orders and they risked expulsion… And now,” his voice changed and became full of hate, “I don’t care whether that satisfies you or not, get out! Get out!” His voice rose as he advanced threateningly. “Get out of my house.”

  Simon moved himself and the two women out of the doorway.

  “Come on Mr. Hawker, you heard what my father said.” Jenny sheltered behind Margaret.

  “So you’re on Daddy’s side, are you?” taunted Bernard. “But you don’t know half of what he’s been up to; you don’t know what a nasty old man he is. I’ve had my suspicions all along and tonight I got into the house and had a good poke around. Have you ever seen what’s in that cupboard,” he pointed at a mahogany corner cupboard. “He keeps it locked, but you can look in now. Go on,” he taunted Simon, “don’t be afraid,” and then he turned to ward off Nigel’s attack.

  Simon opened the cupboard door. Margaret and Jenny craned forward.

  “Poppets!” said Margaret incredulously.

  “Yes, you’re all there. He’s had you just where he wants you all these years; he’s kept your measures too. Oh no you don’t,” he said to Nigel, who made a rush to reach the cupboard, “they’re going to see what you’re really like, behind all your fancy talk. How much you really care for the laws of Wicca, you old fraud.” The wrestling men crashed into a table, which tilted and slid a lamp to the floor. The room darkened. Simon grabbed the poppets and the labeled cords from the cupboard and piled them into Jenny’s arms. “Take them to Margaret’s,” he said. “You know what to do?”

  “Yes, burn them,” Jenny answered, watching fascinated as the spilled paraffin ignited and the carpet flared up, relighting the room with a brighter light than Nigel had ever used, while the two men fought on unconcernedly.

  “Go on,” said Simon, “the old man may try to get them back if I stop the fight. Dad,” he called, “can’t you see that the place is on fire? Stop it you old fool.” He tried to separate them, to drag his father away, but the two men were fighting with an intense personal hatred which isolated them from everything else.

  The room was filling with smoke as Jenny turned and ran downstairs. She had better deal with the poppets and then come back and help.

  She dropped them on the writing room hearth and ran for paper and firelighters. She made a blaze and flung the cords on first, then she inspected the poppets. Robert and Margaret and the Carrs all with their hands tied. Bernard with a new, bright, shiny nail straight through his heart. Rosemary, with hair and fingernail clippings attached, her head and torso stuck with pins. An indeterminate figure with its feet tied; it could be her. She freed them, took out the pins and nails and burned them one by one. As she finished, a disheveled Margaret rushed in.

  “I’m going to send for the fire brigade,” she announced snatching up the telephone. “Those silly men won’t stop fighting and help, and the flames are getting a hold.”

  Jenny stirred the ashes making certain that she’d done her job thoroughly and then ran to the dining room window. She could see the flames leaping in Nigel’s bedroom, devouring the curtains with long lascivious tongues. Simon was running across the courtyard dragging a hose behind him.

  “They’re coming,” announced Margaret. “We tried buckets of water, but they were no use – it had taken hold. And we couldn’t even get the window to shut – the sash cords have gone.”

  Jenny ran out to help. Simon was screwing the hose on a tap; Robert appeared, carrying a ladder. There was no sign of Bernard but she could see Nigel in his study packing silver objects into a box.

  “Could you nip up the back stairs and see what my mother’s doing?” asked Simon. “Tell her to come out, I think we’ve lost control.”

  Jenny ran around the corner of the house, the door wasn’t locked apd, wishing she had her flashlight, she hurried apprehensively up the pitch black stairs. The passage was full of smoke. She called “Rosemary,” and then began to cough. She felt for Rosemary’s door, her smoke-stung eyes blinded by tears.

  The room was dimly lit by the first light of dawn.

  “Rosemary,” Jenny shouted, pulling back the curtains further and then turning to the hunched figure under the bed clothes. “Rosemary, get up. The house is on fire.”

  The aged schoolgirl face with the long braid of hair emerged reluctantly. “I don’t feel very well,” complained a weak voice.

  “You’ll feel much worse if you’re burned alive in your bed,” said Jenny brutally. Fear was pushing her toward a passionate anger with this silly woman lying in an unlit house refusing to save herself. T
he room was rapidly filling with smoke, there was a terrifying roaring noise which grew louder with each moment. Jenny tugged at the bed clothes. She would not die for Rosemary, she would not stay to be trapped in this room.

  “Are you coming, or not?” she shouted and she had to shout now to hear herself above the roaring noise of the fire. The urgency in her voice stirred Rosemary to action.

  “My dressing gown, where’s my dressing gown,” she wailed. Jenny grabbed it from a chair; it was a boy’s one, thick and fustian.

  “You can put it on outside,” she said, pushing Rosemary into the passage. The smoke choked and blinded them, the heat took them by surprise, they could hear flames roaring in the roof and a lurid light lit the far end of the passage. Jenny felt her way along the wall, holding back her rising panic. Where was that beastly door? They must get out. She found a knob and pulled frantically.

  “That’s the broom closet,” Rosemary screamed, her voice high and frightened. “It’s the next one, you fool.”

  They stumbled down the comparatively smoke-free stairs gasping and crying and out into the garden. The sky was brightly lit and in the courtyard it was lighter than day and very hot. This was an inferno, thought Jenny, looking at the fiercely flaming center of the house as she led Rosemary toward the sundial where Margaret stood, impotent and absurd in her old mink coat.

  “It was all the fault of those silly old men,” she wailed.

  Jenny stood bewildered by the noise: the crack and roar, the bursting window panes, the clouds of wild sparks and the awful savagery with which the house was being consumed. Simon, his face blackened, seemed almost hurt by the ineffectualness of his trickle of water. Driven from the house by the heat, he had concentrated all his attention on preventing the fire spreading to Margaret’s half. With his back to the holocaust, he dragged the hose around the courtyard, pursuing sparks.

  Robert was helping Nigel to carry a table from the study. They were both black with grime, dripping with sweat. They carried it to the sundial already surrounded by Nigel’s salvaged treasures.

  “That’s it, I’m afraid,” Robert said. “It would be madness to go in again.” He wiped his face with a handkerchief, covering it with long black smears.

  Nigel’s eyes had a fixed look. He muttered something about silver and turned back toward the house. Robert shouted, “You can’t do it, Nigel. It’s too late.”

  But Nigel didn’t answer, didn’t stop.

  Jenny looked up at the house. From end to end, triumphant flames forked their way through the roof and smoke oozed and billowed, but the center had ceased to be a house. Entirely enveloped in flames, its shape and form had vanished and a furnace raged instead. The heat was growing more and more intense, scorching their faces as they stood by the sundial, forcing them back across the courtyard. Nigel had paused, but suddenly he went on again and disappeared into the smoke and flames.

  Robert and Simon started forward.

  “Come back, you silly bastard,” shouted Robert.

  “Dad,” called Simon, turning his pathetic trickle of water toward the study.

  Suddenly, the two ends of the house seemed to sag. There was a prolonged crash, a savage spurt of flames, a black torrent of smoke. There was no scream from the study, just the long crash followed by the roar of oxygen-fed flames and then the sirens of the fire engines, converging from Ermeporth and Bodmin. They stood in silence, staring hopelessly at the blazing house. Robert beat out a spark smoldering in his jacket and Simon held the hose limply, unaware of the puddle it was making around his feet. Margaret suddenly covered her face with her hands and Rosemary began to cry in strange, hiccuping sobs.

  Robert took command. “Margaret, you take Rosemary indoors and give her some tea or something. Simon you go and meet the fire brigade. Tell them what’s happened, though I don’t see they’ve a hope of doing anything. And they’ll want to know about the mains water supply,” he shouted after Simon’s running back. He turned to Jenny. “You and I had better move this lot into one of Margaret’s out-buildings,” he said pointing to the collection around the sundial. “It’s only going to be in the way here.”

  Jenny felt utterly dispirited as she trudged backward and forward with the oil paintings and tea caddies, the clocks and canteens of silver, the decanter stands and musical boxes that made up Nigel’s hoard. More and more fire engines crowded on the courtyard grass, pumping great gouts of water into the flaming house; gradually the sky grew grayer and the dawn colder and a pall of damp, arid, evil smelling smoke lay thick over the garden.

  “You look all in, Jenny,” Robert said. “But anyway, we’ve done all we can. You go and get yourself a stiff drink and tell Margaret to brew up for the firemen. They’re winning, but it’ll be a pyrrhic victory. I’m afraid the house is done for. Go on. I’ll join you in a minute, I’m just going to see if Simon wants any help; the police are here.”

  Margaret had put on her burnt orange pants suit and made up her face.

  “Irish coffee,” she said handing Jenny a cup. “It’s laced with whisky. And when you’ve drunk it you’d better go to bed. You look like a zombie. Have a bath, but don’t wake Rosemary; she’s asleep in the other spare room. Go on, you’ve done your share for tonight and we shall need you tomorrow, except that it’s morning now, but you know what I mean.”

  “But what about Simon?” Jenny asked anxiously. “He’s got to sleep somewhere.”

  “Drawing room sofa,” said Margaret, “if he ever gets the chance. I see the police are here and there’ll be a lot of explaining to do.”

  Jenny didn’t really sleep, she lay in bed in a stupor of exhaustion, but remained aware of the terrible smell, of the lights and the voices and the heavy clack of the firemen’s boots on the flagstones.

  Then, presently, day came and the birds began to sing despite their night of horror, despite the scorched trees and the seared shrubs and the nests they had lost in the gutters and chimney stacks of the blackened, ruined house.

  14

  The End

  After the violent action of the preceding days, Easter produced a strange hiatus. Simon had told the police of his father’s activities immediately before the fire and they had sent men to sweep up nails and had undertaken to warn the Coastguards of the missing “No Bathing” sign and the Water Board of possible pollution. But the inquest had to wait. And the disposal of the few charred and slightly doubtful remains of Nigel, which the fire brigade had scraped together in the mistaken belief that the widow would need the comfort of a Christian burial, and the salvage and demolition of what remained of the house, had to wait until the holiday was over and life returned to normal.

  Except for staggering downstairs to a couple of meals, Jenny had spent Good Friday in a drunken orgy of sleep and when she resumed life on Saturday morning, she found Margaret already deeply immersed in her own plans for the future.

  “Spain,” she said. “I’m going to set the next one in Spain. Cruel Moors and beautiful gypsies, that great arid landscape and the waves of religious conquest; it’s got everything, I can’t think why I haven’t done it before. We must go to Truro as soon as we’ve had breakfast and buy some books.

  “Oh, and Jenny, I’ve decided to fly out on Tuesday and stay in hotels until I find my dream villa. I’ve told Simon that his mother can move in here, if she can still stand Kilruthan. I couldn’t. I should see that silly old man walk into the flames every time I looked out of the window.” She buried her face in her hands as though to shut out the vision. “Oh dear. It’s all come to such an unexpected end, somehow. But poor Rosemary hasn’t much imagination, she might like to come back. By the way, Simon’s taken her over to Falmouth to stay with her widowed aunt. They left at six o’clock this morning to avoid the traffic and they’re going to stay there until the inquest.

  “Now Jenny, what about you? Is it too much to ask you to stay until Tuesday morning? Because I don’t think I can bear this place on my own and the Cavendishes have their hordes of teenagers staying
so I can’t beg a bed there. And, being Easter, there’s no hope of a hotel.”

  “I don’t mind staying,” said Jenny doubtfully, “but isn’t there a chance that Bernard may come around again and without Simon—?”

  “No, he’s in the hospital. Of course you haven’t heard, but he’s had a coronary. He was found collapsed in his funeral parlor yesterday morning. He’s quite bad, I believe, but of course he’ll recover; they all do nowadays.”

  Jenny felt too confused for clear emotions about anything, but she didn’t think she could bear such a sudden transition back into her old life. Three days would give her time to adjust, to telephone her parents and explain things, to get over the fact that Simon had gone without even saying goodbye. So she agreed to stay and was promptly swept into Margaret’s whirlwind preparations. They bought books and a mass of summer clothes, booked a flight and a hotel and, feeling quite glad of the company of the anonymous crowd, they stayed out until nightfall.

  But on Sunday, there was time to think. Time to look at the ruined half-house and remember the horrors of the fire; time to wonder whether more determined action could have saved the house and averted Nigel’s grisly death.

  And then in the afternoon Bromwyn appeared on a motor scooter and wandered around moaning that the curse of the goddess had come to pass and that evil had rebounded three-fold. Margaret puffed in pursuit offering the solace of gin, tea and coffee and trying to discover Bromwyn’s future plans.

  “If Robert and Mavis really go to New York to see her family and then spend six months touring North and South America and I go to Spain and the Carrs have to leave the district because of the black mass – I’m sure Ermeporth Comprehensive won’t keep him once that scandal’s out, they’re far too stuffy around here – then what are you going to do, Bromwyn? You can’t stay on on your own.”