Squelch

by John Halkin

  As if to welcome her, or so it seemed at the time. Later on, she was to remember them with increasing bitterness.

  It was late October when she made the move down from London and so warm, it might have been the height of summer. The leaves were still a luscious green and the garden was alive with me murmur of late insects. As she unpacked her crockery from the tea chest, piling it up on the old dresser which had been included, part-and-parcel, with the cottage, she noticed a drowsy wasp brushing against the window pane. Normally she hated wasps and would kill them on sight, or call Jack to do it, but this time she even felt sorry for it. She tugged the window open to let it out.

  Ginny was twenty-six, though some mornings that felt like a hundred, specially when she looked in the mirror. What she saw was a less-than-attractive blonde, tired-looking, dark around the eyes, sour lips, and unfashionably short. Stumpy, she’d overheard someone call her. Unemployed, too – though that was her own fault rather than anyone else’s. She’d walked out on a job other girls were queuing up for. Director on a well-known TV series: she knew a dozen people prepared to offer up their virtue on lesser altars than that, yet she had to throw it up!

  Her mind had been in turmoil ever since. Of course there were still days when she was convinced she’d been right. She couldn’t have done anything else: it was a question of self-respect. Integrity. But on other days she knew she’d been a fool.

  Now she was in the cottage she’d have to sort herself out. Already she felt better, just being there. It was a dream cottage: two rooms – one up, one down – with a lean-to kitchen, adjoining loo, and a mass of flowering creeper around the front door. Off the main road, too; tucked away down a meandering lane bordered by high hedges. Here, at last, she could be alone.

  ‘Ginny, I’ve fixed the bed!’ Jack’s voice boomed out in triumph from upstairs.

  ‘Great!’ she called back. She had left him the double bed and bought herself a new single which had been delivered in sections, ideal for manoeuvring up awkward stairs but hell to assemble. ‘What was the secret?’

  ‘What?’ His jeans-clad legs appeared at the top of the narrow, creaking staircase; then a hand, still clutching the spanner. ‘Oh, the bed? It was just a question of working out me underlying principle. Not really as complicated as it seemed.’

  That answer was so typical of Jack, she almost threw a plate at him. Gadgets or people, it was always the same with him; just press the hidden spring, and he thought he could do whatever he liked with them. Well, this was one situation she intended to keep firmly under control. He came down, ducking his head to avoid the low rafter, and she recognised from the expression on his face that he was just longing to rough-house with her as a prelude to trying out the new bed. She was determined that was not going to happen. Not this time.

  ‘You’d better have a wash before you go,’ she suggested coolly. Too coolly, considering all he’d done to help her with the move. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing else I can do?’

  ‘I can manage now, thanks.’

  ‘You’re quite certain? If there is anything… Well, now I’m here I may as well…’

  ‘Jack… please…’ She could have screamed at him, but she held on. ‘Don’t make things more difficult than they are.’

  His T-shirt was damp with sweat and clung to his skin as he peeled it off, tugging it over his head. Fragments of cobweb stuck to his sandy hair, cropped short for the latest television epic in which they had cast him. He had a swimmer’s shoulders with Olympic-class muscles; watching them, she felt the usual unease stirring inside her. Abruptly, she turned her back on him and fetched a couple of towels from the drawer.

  The little kitchen had only one tap which was set high over a low, shallow stone sink. He bent down to hold his head underneath it, then turned it on, grunting as the full force of cold water hit him. Three years they had lived together, Ginny marvelled; three years in a strange, blind dreamland until one morning she woke up and realised that she’d fallen out of love with him.

  It had come to her in a flash, quite unexpectedly. Like a blown fuse.

  Months ago, now. Hateful months during which he’d refused to believe it, pleaded with her, quarrelled, demanded to know whom she’d been seeing, who had turned her against him, too hurt to accept that he had no rival. Love – if that’s what it had been – had simply died in her, leaving nothing.

  ‘Towel?’

  Dripping with water, he reached back for it. She put it into his hand. Then, out of habit, she took the second towel to dry his back. While he rubbed his head vigorously, she ran her forefinger slowly down the hollows around his shoulder blade. Oh Christ, why did he have to be so bloody physical?

  ‘Thank you for helping with the move,’ she said quietly, moving farther away from him.

  ‘Couldn’t let you struggle on your own. Least I could do.’

  ‘Hiring that van was brilliant,’ she went on. ‘Can you imagine a pantechnicon getting down that lane?’

  ‘There’s always a bed for you when you come to London.’

  ‘I’m sure!’ she laughed. ‘You’ll find somebody else.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’ He draped his wet towel over the back of the kitchen chair, then picked up his T-shirt without bothering to put it on. ‘By the way, I meant to tell you. You’ve got cockroaches in this kitchen. And ants.’

  ‘I’ll get some insecticide in the morning.’

  The hired van was parked in front of the cottage next to her own ‘battered baby’, as they had once dubbed her small Renault. Ginny helped him shut the rear doors, slipping the bar across to secure them. Before he climbed in he reached out to kiss her lips, but she turned her head, offering only a cheek. The hurt look on his face made her regret it immediately but by then it was too late.

  ‘You are going to be okay by yourself?’ he asked awkwardly. ‘I mean, I’ll stay if you want me to. Just for your first night.’

  ‘Jack – please? You promised you’d not make it difficult.’

  ‘We both promised a lot of things.’ He started the engine. ‘I’ll come down next week to see how you’re getting on.’

  ‘You’re filming next week!’ she shouted above the noisy revving and grinding as he tried to engage reverse.

  ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday!’ he called out. She was forced to jump back to safety as he went into his clumsy three-point turn over the rough ground. ‘Make it Thursday, shall we?’

  ‘That’s too soon!’ she yelled after him. How could she make him understand she wanted to be on her own? ‘I need time to settle in!’

  In reply, he merely waved his hand. ‘I love you, Virginia Andrewes! Don’t forget!’ he sang out, then immediately roared off down the twisting lane, leaving her laughing in spite of herself.

  She went back inside and began to gather up the torn pages of the Telegraph in which she’d wrapped her plates and cups for the move. A couple of months and Jack would probably have some new dolly girl twined about his neck. Some fresh young actress fishing for introductions to the right producers. When it came to recasting, actors like Jack never had any problem.

  But that was no longer any of her business. She had cut herself free from all of it – from Jack, from that whole world of television, and their friends. Killed off a way of life.

  For three years Ginny had done her stint as a director on that plodding tea-time soap opera. Then – at last – she’d been offered the first play in a brand-new drama series. A really great chance it had been and she’d given it all she’d got. Lived it. Dreamed it – well, Jack could bear witness to that. And that gas chamber sequence! Everyone was impressed: at last here was something to grab the audience where it hurt. Till the producer got cold feet and brought in the Head of Drama who tutted like some demented school-marm and insisted the footage had to come out. Ginny stood on her rights and appealed to the Head of Programmes, woman to woman. The ruling was not only upheld; the sourpuss demanded an additional cut
as well. ‘Then it’ll go out without my name on it!’ Ginny had stormed at them furiously. They welcomed that suggestion so warmly, she felt she’d no alternative but to put in her letter of resignation the same afternoon.

  Her blood still boiled when she thought about it. That had been the best scene in the play, for Chrissake! The key to the whole lousy plot!

  She sat at the little round table by the cottage window and went over it all yet again in her mind. What he said… what she said… ‘Keep your head down,’ the producer had warned her before that final meeting. ‘You don’t think they worry if the scene’s good or not? They’re scared of the pressure groups: I know the signs. It’s my guess they’ve had a nod and a wink from Downing Street.’

  But she hadn’t listened. God, how could she have been so stupid?

  She could hold it back no longer. Her head sank forward on to her arms and her shoulders heaved as she sobbed out her unhappiness. In a fit of pique she’d ruined her career. Destroyed everything. If only she’d knuckled under she’d still be working in television, on the inside, with more chances still to come. But she’d blown all that.

  After a while she blew her nose, dried her eyes and told herself not to be so futile, but that only brought the tears back again. Who cared, anyway? She was alone here in her own cottage: no need to put on a brave face any longer. No need to hide anything.

  With Jack gone, there was no one to hide it from, was there?

  It was almost dark when she stirred herself at last. This wouldn’t do. Time to pull herself together and get organised. She began to hunt around for the matches. After inspecting the cottage, the Electricity Board had refused to reconnect the supply until she had it completely rewired and it might take weeks before someone was free to do it. Her sister Lesley who lived on the far side of the village had come to the rescue with a couple of oil lamps she’d bought during the last miners’ strike.

  Ginny found the matches and lit one of the lamps, placing it on the round table where she had been sitting. It made the room look quite cosy. Still sniffing – on her third hanky – she was starting to range the plates along the dresser shelves when she became aware of a wild squeaking sound coming from outside.

  Bats?

  She shuddered, visualising dark, menacing shapes swooping down to claw at her hair.

  But then the squeaking came closer, until finally it seemed to enter the room itself. She pressed back against the dresser, biting her lip as she stared around apprehensively, trying to see what it could be. Quietly putting down the plate she was holding, she reached for the large wooden spoon which was the only weapon to hand.

  The creature – whatever it was – flew about the room in great uneven circles. Its shadow danced around the walls, now as small as a dinner plate, now suddenly expanded like some demon magician’s cloak.

  Then it stopped and hovered near the lamp as if preening itself. It was a large moth, almost the size of a blackbird. In that soft gentle light, the intricate pattern on its wings seemed like rich velvet, with varying hues of brown shading into each other and curling around brilliant pools of red and purple.

  How gorgeous, she thought. How fascinating!

  She returned the wooden spoon to the dresser and tiptoed to the table, not wanting to disturb it.

  It began to fly again, fluttering around the lamp until she was afraid it might burn itself in the up-draught of heat from that tall glass funnel. She had a vision of those fragile wings bursting into a puff of flame, destroying it.

  She reached forward and turned down the wick. For a second or two a tiny blue flame remained, dancing and spluttering; then that went out too. The room darkened, though it was still possible to see. Outside, the sky was a dull grey from which the last tinges of the sunset had already disappeared.

  ‘Out you go!’

  She attempted to shoo the moth towards the open window, cupping her hands. It flew upwards, escaping towards the ceiling, only to reappear a moment later and sweep majestically around the room. In the gloom it had become a huge, shadowy being like – she could not repress the thought – like some disembodied soul. Ridiculous idea of course; she knew that. After all, it was only a moth: wasn’t it?

  Several times it collided with the glass of the little sash window, attracted by what remained of the daylight. Then it settled on the ledge where it seemed determined to stay.

  ‘Okay, have it your own way,’ she shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  As if in reply, a full Hallelujah chorus of squeaks came from the garden and she realised the air outside was thick with giant moths, wheeling and fluttering like bluebottles over a dung heap. Should she close the window? But then three or four of them were inside already. One flew close to her face, its wings lightly brushing her cheek in a passing caress. She wasn’t afraid, that was the remarkable thing about it. Normally she didn’t like creepie-crawlies, yet here she was now – completely calm, for all the world as though she were receiving visitors.

  The shrill squealing stopped, leaving behind a deathlike silence, tense with unspoken threat.

  Nervously she stared out through the window but nothing was visible, only the dark silhouettes of tall trees against the dusk sky. She could swear they were still in the garden: yet where?

  Moving as quietly as she could, she crept up the narrow, creaking staircase to her bedroom, where she leaned out. Beneath the trees everything seemed to be in deep shadow. Then from all sides of the cottage came a faint sighing on the air, like someone breathing, and the shadows began to change shape as a dense swarm of giant moths rose from the garden and appeared to hover for a time before heading south over the tree-tops.

  Disembodied souls? The idea came back to her insistently. Hadn’t she once read in a book somewhere of a peasant community which believed just that? That night moths were nothing other than the dead returning to keep an eye on the living?

  Or to warn of impending disaster.

  That first moth she’d saved from the flame: might it not, in reality, have been the restless soul of the old woman who had died in the cottage not many weeks earlier? The woman whose death she’d so callously welcomed because it meant the cottage was available at last. Freehold. With vacant possession.

  The mere thought set her flesh tingling. She clattered down the bare wooden stairs, deliberately making as much noise as she could. Lighting both oil lamps, she searched the living room and the lean-to kitchen to satisfy herself that the last moth had left. Visitation from the ‘other side’ or not, she did not want them fluttering around her in the night.

  But there was no sign of them anywhere. They might never have been there at all.

  Through the open window came the busy murmur of other insects, grating on her nerves. To blot out the sound, she switched on her radio and filled the cottage with the jungle beat of the week’s new Number One which she hated. At least it chased the ghosts away.

  Jack found driving that van more cumbersome than he had anticipated when hiring it. For one thing, the gears were not arranged in the familiar order of his own red Ferrari; for another, the steering was heavy, slow to respond, while the turning circle was so cramping, it was practically arthritic. As for acceleration, that word had been erased from the instruction manual, and with reason.

  All this added up to a slow drive back, as he realised only too well before he left the cottage. It probably also saved his life.

  Thinking it over as he turned into the main road which led through the village, he felt pleased Ginny had at least accepted his help with the move. She’d been in an odd mood all year. Post-termination depression syndrome, their platinum blonde doctor had called it when Jack – behind Ginny’s back – had decided to consult her. As a diagnosis it stank. Ginny had been behaving that way since long before the abortion; since before they knew she was pregnant, in fact. But before he had a chance to argue the point, the doctor was already conveying him to the door.

  Jack hadn’t approved of the abortion either, which naturally
led to a quarrel. He’d pleaded with her that a baby needn’t mess up anyone’s career if they were sensible about it. As an actor, he frequently spent long weeks at home waiting for the phone to ring, so most of the time he could look after it. Having at least one parent available all day long was more than many babies enjoyed.

  ‘I’d be tied to you!’ she’d objected vehemently. ‘I don’t intend being tied to anyone. I want to be free. I must be.’

  He remembered it as clearly as if it were yesterday – a straight-from-the-shoulder, brutal declaration, muffled by the towel as she dried herself after washing her hair. She probably did not even realise the effect it had on him. Water trickled down over her breasts, gleaming in the yellow light of their dingy bathroom, and he’d wanted her more than ever. His whole body yearned for her.

  Oh shit!

  Pulling off the road into a service station on the far edge of the village, he bought petrol, checked the oil and tyres, and spent some minutes testing the plugs, suspecting he might have been driving on three cylinders only, though he found nothing obviously wrong. The lad behind the counter was reading New Musical Express. He didn’t even look up when Jack went to pay.

  Once he’d left the village, the A-road became a simple, twisting tarmac strip with an intermittent white line painted down the centre and high hedges on either side blocking the view. He drove slowly; not that he had much choice with the van in the state it was.

  Ginny had gone, he told himself, though his mind seemed too dull to take it in. After more than three years together with eyes for no one else, resenting every minute they had to be apart, after all that they had split up. Of course the real break had happened weeks earlier, but until today at least she’d stayed on in the flat; now even that was over.

  He could almost pinpoint the day. It was soon after she started work on that big drama production. It all followed from that, he thought bitterly, working at the wheel as the road took an unexpected sharp turn. She had plunged into it so wholeheartedly, she’d never come back. Location shooting, outside rehearsal, long days in the studio: he might have been living with a stranger during those weeks. The quickie abortion was slipped in between recording and editing; only she’d been kept in hospital a few days longer than she’d reckoned, which messed up her timetable.