by Nina Allan
A wide, unkempt front lawn swept down to the road. A broken water sprinkler gushed fruitlessly, flooding one strip of grass to a greenish mulch while the turf to either side went bald in the harsh yellow sun. Where the lawn met the moor, dandelion and thistle sprouted in droves. A line of faded pink paving slabs made a rudimentary path to the front door.
Not exactly Brünnhilde’s mountain top, is it? said “Artist.” I did my best to ignore her, though I could hardly disagree with her analysis. Although in my darker moments I occasionally imagined something in the manner of a Victorian lunatic asylum, complete with bars on the windows and spiked iron railings, if I nursed any preconceptions at all, they had mostly featured the hushed green ambience of one of the more modest and less frequently visited stately homes, a haven where damaged souls and fragile bodies might retreat from the world for a while to recuperate in peace. Gazing at the drab and oddly ramshackle exterior of what lay before me, I found myself reminded of the formerly grand hotels in aging seaside resorts – Eastbourne, Bexhill – that had been sold off in their hundreds after the war and converted into bedsits or retirement homes.
Close to the house, a lone woman paced to and fro across the lawn. She was pushing a baby carriage, an old-fashioned perambulator with enormous silver-spoked wheels and a fringed canopy. She traipsed back and forth between the broken water sprinkler and a concrete bird bath, covering exactly the same distance each time, as if she were counting out the steps, which maybe she was. As I came slowly up the path towards her, I saw that the pram was empty. I hesitated, wondering how the woman might react to my presence, but she didn’t appear to notice me at all.
The front door was standing ajar, revealing a doormat, a tiled square of hallway and beyond that another door. On the other side of the glass I could make out a stretch of corridor surfaced in what looked like brown linoleum. Go on then, said “Artist.” This is the proverbial it.
I reached up and pressed the doorbell. There was a harsh, clattery ring. The inner door was opened almost immediately, as if someone had been lying in wait just behind the glass. Standing before me was a woman in what looked to be her mid-fifties, dressed in a checkered woolen pinafore dress and red open-toed sandals. Her gray hair hung straight to her shoulders, the front portion held in place with a pink plastic hair slide.
“You must be Mr. Allman,” she said. “Do come in.” She smiled a bright, artificial smile, like an actor in a toothpaste commercial. Her voice sounded familiar suddenly and I realized this was the woman I had spoken to on the phone the evening before.
“My name is Andrew Garvie,” I said. “I’m Bramber’s friend. Bramber Winters? I think I spoke to you yesterday.” I paused. “Are you one of the nurses?”
She had seemed to be on the point of letting me pass, but at the mention of the word “nurse,” she moved swiftly to block my way.
“Of course I’m one of the nurses,” she said. “And you can’t come in.”
“I don’t mean any harm,” I said. I could hear “Artist” sniggering from inside the holdall. “I only want to talk to her. I did try to phone.”
The woman’s mouth fell open slightly. I could see the tip of her tongue protruding between her teeth.
“You’re not on the list,” she said. “Mr. Allman is on the list.”
“Perhaps you could just tell Bramber I’m here?”
“No one’s allowed to see her. Not without permission from Dr. Leslie.”
“Well, perhaps I could talk to Dr. Leslie then? I don’t mind waiting.”
The woman hung her head and refused to look at me. At that moment a door opened at the far end of the corridor and a small group of people emerged. At their head was an extremely tall man in a white coat, his bony wrists protruding from the sleeves. Around his neck hung an instrument I initially took to be a stethoscope but on closer inspection revealed itself as a bizarre arrangement of rubber tubing and metal clamps, the kind of instrument one might imagine in the possession of a Dr. Frankenstein. As for what it might actually be used for, I dreaded to think.
“You must be Dr. Leslie,” I said. I stepped forward and extended my hand. “I’m here to see Miss Winters.” I had hoped my use of Bramber’s surname would inspire confidence in him: here was someone who was clearly a professional, who was used to speaking with doctors on equal terms. As it was, my words came out in a rush, almost a gabble. I realized I probably sounded as confused as the woman in the red sandals.
“Who told you she was here?” barked the doctor. He turned away to address the woman in a way that seemed deliberately designed to exclude me. “Jackie, you know what I told you about talking to strangers.”
The woman put her hands behind her back, carried on staring at the ground. She looked as if she might be about to burst into tears. One of the men who had arrived with the doctor stepped to her side.
“It’s not your fault, Jacks. They’ll try anything, these people.” He placed an arm around the woman’s shoulders. He wore a moth-eaten long-line cardigan the color of pea soup and a pair of gray flannel trousers held up with braces. In contrast with the doctor, all his clothes seemed too big for him. He appeared to stoop beneath their weight, and seemed much older than the woman, although his voice remained surprisingly firm.
“We’re not used to this kind of intrusion,” said the doctor. “We’re very private here. When you’re working with vulnerable patients, you have to be.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Pretending to be one of us, too,” he added. “Some people have no morals at all.”
At first I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I saw that two of those accompanying him were also dwarfs. One of them, unlike me, was a true achondroplasic, with the characteristically prominent jawline and foreshortened limbs. He looked to be in his early twenties, a robust youth in button-fly jeans and a gray sports vest. Beneath his high-domed forehead his deep-set eyes were shadowy and huge. He was more or less exactly my own height. Beside him stood a young woman with silver toenails and matching sandals, her long, silky-textured hair the color of wheat.
“Keep your eyes to yourself, mate,” said the youth. “She’s with me.” He slung an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. Their bodies made audible contact at the hip. The girl sniggered. She reminded me of “Artist,” I realized. Two mad queens.
“If you go now we’ll say no more about it,” the doctor was saying. “I don’t want to bother the police, not if I can help it. They have enough to be getting along with as it is.”
He came straight at me, his thin arms outstretched. I was so surprised by the turn of events I had no time to step aside. I went down hard on the floor of the porch, landing on my backside with a painful thump.
The front door banged swiftly closed. I was alone, outside the house, almost as if the past ten minutes had never happened. I stared up at the facade, feeling furious as well as confused. I reached for my mobile, thinking I would keep phoning until they at least agreed to let Bramber know I was there, then realized I had forgotten to load the number into my contacts.
I heaved myself to my feet and made my way back down the pathway past the broken water sprinkler, the base of my spine still throbbing from the fall, the woman with the pram still continuing with her guard duty on the ill-nourished grass.
I think I was in shock at that point. I had never had a physical altercation with anyone, not since school, and although the doctor’s assault on me could hardly have been described as violent, it had nonetheless left me feeling confused, shaken, and utterly deflated. If he even was a doctor – I had only his word for it, and the man hadn’t come across as exactly reliable. Was Bramber being held here against her will, after all? I realized I couldn’t even be sure she was on the premises.
Looks like you’ll have to break in, then, said “Artist.” I could hear her quite distinctly, even from inside the holdall. Desperate times call for desperate measures, Sir Lancelot.
Whatever, said “Artist.” You’re not going to let one mad doctor stop you, surely? If you let these people win you’re no knight at all.
She was right, of course. I couldn’t just leave. In every sense of the word, I had come too far. I reasoned I would probably not have to actually break in either, not to the extent of smashing a window or forcing a lock. As “Artist’s” kidnapper, the last thing I wanted was to attract the attention of the police. But it would do no harm to see if this perplexing, ramshackle building had another entrance.
I turned left at the end of the path, following a line of gorse bushes that appeared to mark the official dividing line between the garden and the surrounding moorland. The flatness of the landscape meant that I would easily be visible to anyone who happened to be watching me from inside, but so far as I could tell, no one was. West Edge House stood silent and closed. Even the woman with the pram had gone indoors.
The gorse bushes petered out alongside a graveled pathway which appeared to offer access to the rear of the property. I followed it with rising excitement, only to find myself thwarted again by a stout wooden fence which effectively cordoned off the entire back garden. My heart sank at the sight of it. Without the use of a ladder, my way was barred. Brünnhilde’s mountaintop, indeed.
Then I realized that one of the fencing panels was actually a gate. Unsurprisingly it was bolted shut, though this time my luck was in: the bolt was on the outside, effectively making the garden into a prisonyard.
Fortunately it was easy to open.
I slid back the bolt, peered cautiously through the gap. I saw a lawn, cracked and disheveled as the grass that fronted the building, a sort of circumscribed wasteland. Closer to the house was a concreted patio area. Canvas chairs stood in a shabby group around a plastic table. Large French doors overlooked the patio. For a second I glimpsed the dwarf boy, staring at me, aghast, from behind the glass. I reeled backwards, heart racing, and so did he. I realized I’d been fooled by my own reflection.
I moved quickly out of sight of the windows and towards a long rear extension that jutted out from the main house, forming an “L” shape. The kitchens maybe, or consulting rooms for the doctors. The windows in that part of the building were high up and narrow, almost like windows in a castle. I felt hideously exposed, consumed by the same paranoia I had experienced in Wade, my body shrinking before the glare of invisible telescopes. I dodged around the back of the extension and into a concrete passageway that ran down between the house and fence and that led back, or so I assumed, to the road at the front. Here at last I felt safer, less spied upon, which was probably why when I saw the door in the wall I felt less surprised than I might have done otherwise. The balance of West Edge House had tipped in my favor, it seemed. I had stumbled upon another way inside.
The door was of the modern uPVC variety, with frosted glass panels. I pulled down on the handle. The catch clicked and I felt the door open. I hesitated for just a moment, and then went inside.
I found myself in some sort of vestibule, the floor surfaced with the same brown linoleum I had glimpsed in the main hallway. Opposite the door, two metal filing cabinets stood either side of an ancient corduroy sofa. Running directly off this apparent waiting area, a flight of stairs led upwards to the first floor. I hurried up the steps, my feet making rapid tapping sounds on the bare linoleum. At the top was another door, furnished with reinforced glass and leading to a spacious landing. From here, a wide corridor ran what seemed to be the entire length of the house. A number of doors led off. Tall windows bathed the landing in late morning light. The walls were covered with a faded paper, patterned with roses, the kind you might expect to find inside the home of an elderly aunt. From somewhere I could hear the mellow, curiously restful sound of a ticking clock. The ambience here was reassuring, comforting even, a thousand miles from the chaotic lunacy I had encountered downstairs.
I made my way carefully along the corridor, the carpeted floorboards creaking softly beneath my feet. All the doors looked identical. I felt like the bumbling soldier in Andersen’s fairy tale “The Tinder Box,” afraid that if I picked the wrong door the doctor would come, or the dwarf boy, that this miraculous chance would be wasted and I would lose Bramber forever.
It was the postcard that saved me – the postcard of Bramber castle I had sent to Bramber soon after we began our correspondence. I had not expected to see it again, but suddenly there it was. Someone – and I could only presume it had been Bramber herself – had placed it in a frame and hung it on the back of one of the doors. Finally I had arrived at my goal. X marks the spot.
The white-painted door stood ajar. I tapped softly and waited, hoping I might hear her voice, telling me to come in, that she was glad I was here.
Impossible thoughts, silly daydreams. How could Bramber know I had arrived when I had never even told her I was on my way? When there was no answer I knocked again more loudly and then pushed open the door. You’ll say I shouldn’t have done that, that the room was Bramber’s private domain and I had no right to be there.
What choice did I have, though? I had traveled so far, so many miles heading westwards with her in my thoughts. She held my future in her hands without even realizing. I had to tell her I was here at least. After that it would be up to her.
I don’t know what I expected to see. An invalid’s room, perhaps, the curtains drawn against the sunlight, a figure propped up in bed, shrouded in white? In reality it was just a bedroom, larger than average and bright with sunshine, overlooking the garden. There was a high wooden bed with a green quilted cover, a low-backed chintz armchair, a battered 1930s bureau in walnut or teak. On top of the bureau was a polished wooden jewelry casket and beside that a glass snow dome containing a miniature model of Hampton Court Palace. There was also a photograph, a framed snapshot of a girl in a pleated tartan skirt and navy jumper. The girl was seated on a wall in front of a house, one hand half raised, as if she’d been about to wave and then inexplicably decided not to. Her fair hair stood out from around her head in a wispy cloud.
I recognized her at once as Helen Mason.
Bramber’s dolls were seated on a wooden chest at the end of the bed. They were nothing special, the kind of attractive yet commonplace examples that offer a gateway to doll collecting but are never its ultimate goal. Most dated from the 1890s, and only one had any real value, a dreamy-faced LaQuelle “Marie-Therese.”
I crossed to the window and looked down into the garden. It looked different from up there – neater and more inviting. A green lawn strewn with daisies, a sun-warmed patio where people could sit and talk and drink lemonade and play cards.
I had been crazy to believe I could make a difference here, that my intrusion could represent anything but an embarrassment. What could I know of Bramber’s life, of what she really needed, let alone wanted?
No fool like a little fool, said “Artist.” Unkindly, I thought.
“You can talk,” I said. I felt ready to laugh suddenly, even though my eyes were full of tears.
Touché.
I took “Artist” from the holdall, lifting her carefully into the light of the room like the brittle, surly thing she surely was. “What now?” I said. “Seeing as you’re so clever.”
I held her up to the window, green eyes blazing. And that was how Bramber found us when she entered the room.
I did not hear her approach, because I did not expect to. I think I had given up at that point, stopped hoping for any kind of resolution, and so she was the last person I expected to see. The first I knew of her presence was when I heard her cry out.
“Anders?” she said. More of a whisper, really. I wheeled around, still clutching “Artist.” Steady on, “Artist” grumbled. You’re hurting. But I scarcely heard her.
There she was in the doorway, Bramber Winters. My Bramber, if you
like, though I would not have dared call her that. The first thing I noticed was that her feet were bare – another reason I had not heard her coming. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a sequined butterfly across the front, ordinary clothes, the kind you might find in any high street chain store. Her face was round and faintly freckled, a nice face. She reminded me a little of the girl I had spoken to outside the fish and chip shop in Bodmin.
Her hair was cut short: mid-brown, beginning to go gray. I think it was this last detail that moved me, most of all.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Were you looking for Paul? I only thought because…” Her words petered out, and I realized she had mistaken me for a friend of the dwarf boy, the handsome lad in the sports vest with the dark brown eyes – freak calls to freak.
I felt disappointed, not because of what she had said but because it was she who had said it. I had hoped she might be different, that she would see me – truly see me – and not just my height.
Unfair of me, of course – we had only just met – but even dwarfs dare to dream.
“You thought I was him,” I said. I laughed nervously. “Anders Tessmond, from the story by Ewa Chaplin.”
She blushed rose pink, and if I had not already been in love with her I think I would have fallen for her in that moment, then and there.
“How would you know?” she stammered. “I mean, I don’t understand.”
“I have Ewa’s book – Nine Modern Fairy Tales. I’ve been reading the stories on the way.”
“On the way?”
“Here. To see you. I know I should have written and told you but I was afraid you’d say no.”
I saw confusion and anxiety on her face, the question of who I might be still unresolved. Then she caught sight of the doll in my arms and her eyes widened.