Gethsemane Hall (6 page)

“So?” Corderman asked, and this time she had no good answer for him. “What’s the plan?” he prompted.

The plan was to grow up. “I had a stupid idea,” she said. (If she had the nerve, though. Maybe. Maybe. Try something a bit more subtle first.) She approached the bar and ordered a pint of Kronenbourg. “Mind if I ask you something?” she asked the big man who served her.

“One minute, luv.” He moved up and down the length of the bar, filling orders with the efficiency of a balletic automaton. He made a complete pass, then, caught up for the moment, he came back to her. “What can I do for you?” He laughed. Pertwee didn’t get the joke, didn’t even see it, but she caught the infection and joined in.

She held out her hand. “My name is Anna Pertwee, Mr. ..?”

“John Porter.” His grip was made for hoisting tankards. “Yes, I know who you are.” Still friendly, but a hair less jovial. His eyes gave away nothing.

So far, Pertwee had behaved. She knew she could trigger at least some small media dust-ups if she wanted. She hadn’t in the past, that damned hope for credibility restraining her from making any overt alliances with the useful but dangerous tabloids. She hadn’t spoken to any reporters in Roseminster, didn’t think they even knew she was here. But the word of her presence was out, it seemed, at least on the local channels. “Do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

“For the Hall.” That laugh again, but the eyes were wary.

“Yes, but not for the same reason as all the newspapers. I’m not about making life worse for people.”

“Never said you were, miss.”

“But you think I am. My impression is that most of you do.”

Porter shook his head. “We really don’t, you know.”

“But you won’t help me get into that house.”

“A man’s entitled to his privacy.”

“What privacy? With every red-top in existence camped on his doorstep?”

“They aren’t —”

“You know what I mean. I’m sure Lord Gray hasn’t been able to answer the telephone in a normal fashion a single time since he returned from Africa. But to be honest, I’m thinking about the greater good. I’m thinking about all of you.”

“Are you, now.” No laughter. He was very quiet. For a moment, he was impassive enough to take up residence on Easter Island, then he shifted his attention to her right. “Excuse me,” he said and did another lap of the bar. When he returned, he was still serious. “How, exactly, can I help you, miss?” Formal, almost stiff, that wall she’d run into so many times rising again.

“You don’t seem to understand. I want to help
you
. All of you. The good name of Gethsemane Hall has been smeared, and so, through association, has Roseminster’s. You don’t want to become known as the British Amityville, do you?”

“Exactly.” Corderman had come to stand at her elbow, and piped up now. Pertwee held up a hand to shush him. Porter ignored him.

“What are you proposing to do?” Porter asked.

“Investigate the Hall properly. Show people what it’s really all about.”

“And you think you know what it’s about?”

“Of course! Don’t you?”

Porter scratched the back of his neck, studied the bar surface as if he could see his reflection. “You’ll really have to pardon me, miss. Duty calls.” He swept away, and Pertwee heard him begin to laugh again as he took orders.

You bastard,
Pertwee thought.
Just for that, I am going to make a scene
. Her outrage fuelled her courage. “Right,” she muttered.

“Should I be brave?” Corderman asked, half-joking.

“I would say yes,” she said. She grabbed an ashtray and rapped it against the bar. “Excuse me!” she called. The woman standing next to her barely glanced her way. “Excuse me!” Again, louder. Her voice disappeared into the conversational roar. “
Oi!
” A few more looks, some awkward shuffling of feet. She was on her way to being an embarrassment instead of a provocateur. She considered climbing on the bar after all, but it looked narrow. People were leaning over it. She pictured herself falling over and began to flush in the anticipation of humiliation. “Can you whistle?” she asked Corderman, raising her index fingers to her mouth to indicate the kind of ear pierce she wanted. He shook his head. She couldn’t, either. Her shoulders slumped. Useless. She couldn’t even make a nuisance of herself. “Let’s go,” she said.

As she headed for the exit, a man stepped forward to intercept her. He was very old. His back was as round as his shoulders, as if from a weight too heavy and carried too long. His eyes were the long plummet of fatigue. He touched his forehead with two fingers, tipping an imaginary cap. “Might I speak with you?” he asked. Pertwee nodded, and the man led them outside. He introduced himself as Roger Bellingham. “I do think you mean well,” he began. “You would, however, be doing the town and yourselves a service by leaving the Hall alone.”

“I’m sorry. But I don’t think it’s fair for you to keep the house to yourselves. It’s too important.”

His laugh was a short, bitter bark. “Oh, dear me, that isn’t what we’re trying to do.”

“What, then? Are you afraid of it?”

He didn’t answer. He poked at a stone on the pavement with his stick.

“Can’t you feel it?” Pertwee pleaded. She spoke quietly.

Bellingham looked up, the movement sharp and quick. “Feel what?” A hint of alarm.

“It’s hard to describe. Like a pull. When I looked down the drive toward the Hall, and knew I was so close, even if I couldn’t actually see it, I felt drawn to it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then you do feel the same thing?”

“I have felt tugged toward that house every moment of every day of my life.” He said this with a resignation and despair so profound, Pertwee’s heart gave an unpleasant lurch.

“Then all the more reason,” she began, “for you to help —”

Bellingham held up a hand. “Do you love the sea?” he asked.

Pertwee sputtered for a moment, trying to catch up. “Yes,” she said, confused.

“But if you were swimming, and you encountered an undertow or a riptide, what would you do? Even if you love the sea, you don’t want to approach it on its own terms.”

Corderman asked, “Are you saying the house is bad?”

“It can’t be,” Pertwee answered, firm. “It was the home of a saint.”

“You seem very sure,” Bellingham commented.

“Am I wrong?”

“No. It was on that site that Saint Rose the Evangelist lived and died. You are right about that.”

“And people have, for centuries, found spiritual renewal in that house.”

Bellingham gave her a curious look. “Yes, those are the stories. Go on. What else do you know about the Hall?”

Corderman jumped in. “Some people believe the spirit of Saint Rose looks out for whoever stays there. More likely, she created a conduit to a higher plane, and that’s what people are experiencing. Either way, it’s the most transcendent residence in Britain.”

“Is that a fact? My, my, how reassuring.”

“I don’t understand your sarcasm,” Pertwee said.

“That’s because you haven’t lived here. You cannot, because we who know it best do not, understand the house.”

“Maybe you need to be an outsider. How many Parisians visit the Eiffel Tower? I have made a study of such places as Gethsemane Hall, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it. But if you’d been thorough, then I doubt you’d be here. You would either dismiss the stories you’ve heard as fanciful and not bother with the place, or you would draw the correct conclusions and stay far away.”

“That makes no sense. All the tales about Gethsemane Hall are positive ones. Except the most recent. That’s why we can’t let it colour the world’s perception of the house.”

“How reliable are those other stories? No, don’t answer. I’ll tell you. They’re worthless. I have done some research, too, over the years. I wanted to understand this thing that was pulling at me. Do you know, every person who has ever written about what a wonderful oasis of peace and tranquillity and salvation and I don’t know what other rubbish the house is, has never actually resided there?”

“But Edward Hardsmith’s
The Lights of Gethsemane Hall
—”

“A fraud. I have seen the correspondence from the Gray family to their solicitors. Hardsmith was a fabulist. He never visited the Hall.”

“But the details he gives of the town. Even allowing for the passage of a hundred and fifty years, they’re extremely accurate.”

“He stayed here. In town. That is far from being a guest of the Grays. The family itself has never spoken of the house, and their tenancy here has not been joyful. Take a good look at the sources that speak glowingly of the Hall. They are all based on hearsay, or on the experiences of those who visited Roseminster and felt the pull.” Bellingham gave her a smile grim with knowledge. “One feels drawn to a place one is convinced is holy. The conclusion one arrives at is obvious.”

“And what makes it wrong?” Pertwee demanded.

“Live here for a while, young lady. Not for a week or a month, but a year.” His voice was fading, turning into the dry whispers of old pages rubbed together. “Then you’ll know.” He touched his forehead again and walked away. Pertwee thought he seemed to be leaning against a strong tide.

the first night home

It was as if he were chasing the jitters down.

He spent the day settling in. He went through the house, opening the windows to banish the stale air. He made lists of the supplies he would need to pick up tomorrow. He avoided one room. He killed the evening with the news and a bottle of Chardonnay, but he did not set foot in the room. He did wonder why he was delaying until nightfall. The answer he gave himself was that he was waiting for maximum silliness before he brought out the big guns of rationality.
Prove it
, he told himself.
Fine
, he responded. He took his pyjamas out of the master bedroom and tossed them onto the floor in front of the shut door.
There
, he said.
That’s where I’m sleeping tonight
.

And now it was time to sleep. He went to confront the bedroom from his childhood and his dream (he called it that now, downgrading the experience from hallucination, whistling in the dark with semantics). The room was on the first floor, in the northeast corner of the Hall, the most remote of a suite. There were two entrances to it: from the west, through two other rooms; and from the south, through a bedroom that connected to the Old Chapel. During the visits here, his parents had taken the westernmost room of the suite, the one with the big windows and the most light. He thought back to those stiff Christmases and Easters with relatives he barely knew, all of them, it had seemed to him, old enough to remember the Crusades. He remembered his resentment and anxiety at his parents placing an empty room between himself and them. Their privacy, his quarantine. He had feared the space filled with absence on the other side of both doors.

There was absence everywhere now.

Gray stood in the bedroom, waiting for the jitters to drive him out. The mustiness was uncomfortable in its familiarity, the real world shaped in the perfect sensory mimic of his dream. He knew that he had causality reversed, that the room had always had this smell of old bed linen and older carpets, and that his dream had dredged up body memories from decades past. But the dream was recent, its impact more real and disturbing than his rift with Hudson. It laid claim to being first, creating a wake for the conscious world to follow.

Gray approached the bed. It was covered by the hideous terrycloth bedspread he had dreamed and remembered. It was the pale yellow of old, stained newspaper. It had crawled onto the bed sometime early in the last century, and no one had had the decency to throw it out. The room was used so rarely, it had been allowed to sink into its sullen bubble of stasis. Gray could see nothing that had changed since he had last slept here, over twenty years earlier. He could see nothing that differed from the dream. He stretched out a hand. His fingers tingled as they neared the bedspread. His shoulders were tense with anticipated shock. If the cloth dissolved into slime on contact, he might almost be relieved. Instead, the moment of touch was exactly what he had expected, exactly the dream. Of course it was, he told himself. What did he want terrycloth to feel like?

He was annoyed with himself. “Get
over
it.” He spoke aloud, trying to break up the silence. Instead, the sound of his voice turned into a stagnant echo, nothing except a reminder that there was no one to answer. Angrier yet, he sat down hard on the bed. The mattress was old and soft. He sank into it like it was quicksand.

He snorted, at what he wasn’t sure. He looked at the brass lamp on the bedside table. It remained aloof. He shook a finger at it. “You think you’re smart, don’t you? You’re not. You’re stupid and inert. You don’t frighten me.” The lamp said nothing. Gray returned its silence. He waited. The unease was not enough to make him run. It began to wither in the face of rationality’s scorn. He began to stand but was so deep into the mattress that the leverage was difficult. The mattress began to feel less like a bog, more like an embrace. A bit of a nap, Gray thought, feeling more welcome in the Hall now that he had conquered the silliness. He was also tired. He kicked off his shoes and lay down. He sank into the middle of the bed. He was very comfortable.
I should turn off the light
, he thought, but he closed his eyes instead.

When he was four, when dreamland had too often been hostile, dangerous territory, he had spent many consecutive nights trying to catch the exact moment that sleep came for him. He had never succeeded. But now, without trying, without desire, he saw and knew the instant. He felt sleep arrive, and it was a juggernaut blow of darkness.

the league of concerned friends

The night was a memory tomb. Gray didn’t wake until late morning. When he did, everything from his arrival until that present moment had vanished into the dark. He knew what he had done the evening before. The information of his activities was available to him. But this was data, not memories. He might as well have read about the last twenty-four hours in someone else’s journal. The dream back in London had a concreteness that the real events did not. He sat on the edge of the bed, confused. He felt as if a chunk had been tugged from his mind, leaving only the hollow trace of what had been there.

He stood up, trying to shake the feeling, and the thought crossed his mind that he should leave. He shrugged it off. He hadn’t been sleeping well in London. If his memories were dead and flat, he also felt refreshed. Even if there was a claw-scrape of unease in his chest, even if he had faced this room like a potential enemy last night, he felt at home. He had settled into Gethsemane Hall the way he had sunk into the mattress, surrendering to the soft pull. The house was giving him the first real embrace he had received and accepted since Lillian and Jill had died. He was in no hurry to flee it.

And yet he had to go into town today. There were groceries and household supplies to buy. He experienced sudden relief at the thought of going outside the grounds of the Hall.
Make up your mind,
he told himself. He didn’t. Instead, he let his instinct hurry him. He shed the clothes he’d slept in, and showered. The bathroom was just off his parents’ old bedroom. Lady Gloria had had newer fixtures installed, mixing with the old, and there was a plastic-and-chrome flex shower head coiled in the claw-footed tub. Afterwards, he went back into his room and eyed it up and down for a minute, wondering if would spend the night here again. He put off the decision and left through the south door, crossing the other bedroom into the Old Chapel. There were no longer any pews or altar, but the fourteenth-century stained glass window had never been removed. The space was narrow, the ceiling high and raftered. When the new chapel had been constructed in the eighteenth century, the old one had briefly been converted into yet another bedroom, then storage. Within Gray’s memory, the space had always been empty, a limbo room to pass through to reach stairs to the ground floor, a pointlessness whose shape was the only memory of what it once had been. He was halfway down its length when he fell.

He fetal-curled against the sudden agony of loss, harsh and fresh as the moment of first news. He whimpered. The blows were physical. His wife and daughter were dying again,
right now
, in the IMAX surround of his mind’s eye. He began to shiver. Absolute-zero sweat slicked his body. He couldn’t move. His eyes were clenched shut, but another wave of chainsaw grief hit, and the pain snapped his lids open. He was staring at the window, looking up at the glass collage shaped into the Madonna and child. He flashed on his nightmare of the laughing crucifixion, and his rage was suddenly as big as his grief. “Fffffff,” he whispered. “
Fffffffuuuck ... yyyyyyyou
,” he snarled, to the general and the specific.

And then he could move. He unlocked his arms, straightened his body and crawled forward. His body temperature rose. After a few feet, he was breathing again. He made it to his feet and stood, swaying. He wiped his forehead. The emotions receded, withdrawing waves sucking at sand.
What?
he thought.
What the hell?
He glanced at the window, felt nothing now but low-grade resentment. He ran from the chapel, thundered down the stairs. He kept running until he was outside and was drawing in air lush as the vegetation. He couldn’t make it to his car fast enough.

His tires spun gravel all the way up the drive, but when he reached the gate, his foot eased off the accelerator. The urgency to flee the Hall was draining away, being replaced by a sense of foolishness and the resurgent pull of homing instinct. He was running from what, exactly? His own grief? Didn’t he expect that there would be moments like the one he had just experienced? Of course there would be. Even as the rationalization dissipated the last of the terror, he distrusted it. He didn’t like the way his emotions flattened out, as if a switch had been flicked. Then he saw what was waiting for him on the other side of the gate. He stopped the car.

It was a scrum. Reporters and photographers were so many pustules clustered at the entrance. They spread out to block the road as he approached. His hand hesitated over the gate’s remote control. He counted maybe a dozen people. The options were bad. He could try to nose through with the car, but at the speed he would have to go to avoid injuring someone, they could stay with him indefinitely. If there were an accident, the Furies would pursue him to his grave and beyond. The other choice was to go it on foot, enter the quagmire without a protective metal shell. Ugly as slime. But at least the worst kind of stupid damage he could do would be with his fists.

Maybe I can deal with them
, he kidded himself as he shut off the car’s engine and climbed out. Maybe if he didn’t run, gave the carrion hunters what they wanted, they would be satisfied and move on to the next carcass. He didn’t even know what they were after, though he had an ugly suspicion at the back of his mind. Maybe he was wrong, though. Maybe this was just a last gasp of interest in him. Maybe all these things.
Maybe
, he thought,
pigs are performing at the Biggin Hill air show
. Still, he shaped his face into an expression he hoped was polite and pleasant. He stepped up to the gate to open it manually. “Good morning,” he said.

The cacophony was instant. The reporters yelled questions that sounded like accusations. The photographers opened with a heavy barrage. Gray tried to convert the wave of sound into a white noise background. He almost managed it as he walked through the gate, but enough of the words shouted were the same and he understood them whether he wanted to or not. He heard
Lord Gray
and
haunted
and
refuse
. He thought,
Bloody hell
. The scrum closed in and jostled him as he locked the gate. He held on to his temper. “You know,” he said, “I can’t very well answer your questions if I can’t make them out.” He spoke at a conversational level. If they wanted to hear him, they could shut up. He smiled. There was a moment of relative silence, and he began to walk forward. It was like wading in neck-deep water.

“Lord Gray,” someone began again.
Sun? Mirror? Mail?
Did it matter? “Will you be permitting a scientific investigation of the phenomena at Gethsemane Hall?”

“This is my home. For reasons that should be understandable, I am seeking a bit of seclusion these days.” He thought that sounded all right. Then he made a mistake: “So, no.”

Too abrupt. The gloves came off. “How can you block access to the most significant spiritual site in Britain?” “How do you justify one man’s wishes standing in the way of a potential benefit for humanity?” “Are you trying to keep the house’s powers to yourself?” “Have you been talking with the ghosts?” “Would you be open to a study if you were satisfied it was
scientific
?” “Are you cooperating with the CIA?”

The CIA?
he thought. “Excuse me,” he said and tried to push through.

The scrum pushed back. “Have you been speaking with your dead wife?”

He stopped walking. He glared at the reporter who’d asked the question. The man was six inches from his nose. Gray saw red but kept just enough restraint not to throw a punch. It barely mattered. Somewhere in the recesses of his fury, a tiny voice was telling him that they’d won, that they’d goaded him into just the sort of reactions that made sexy pictures. The voice drowned in the crimson anger. Gray spat in the reporter’s face. Cameras buzzed and clicked like a swarm of cicadas. Frenzied by the scent of blood, the swarm descended. Gray’s anger turned to claustrophobic panic. The scrum became a mob. As Gray descended into instinct and the shouts multiplied, the questions at last did turn into white noise. He fought to free himself. He pushed and shoved and lawsuits be damned. He moved forward by what felt like inches. He was yelling, but he didn’t know what. He couldn’t think, and he couldn’t hear himself. He roared and thrust both hands out in front of him. He caught a reporter on the upper chest. The man stumbled back, lost his balance and fell over. He took three others down, domino crash. A gap opened. Gray leaped through it over the jumble of limbs and cameras. He landed awkwardly, and his left knee spasmed. He ignored the pain and ran. Behind him, the pack bayed and gave chase.

He tore up the road and gained a few seconds. He had months of staying alive in Africa to give him stamina. The wolves were slowed by equipment and the crush of numbers. Gray took the bend before town, and fifty yards ahead was The Leaping Stag.
Sanctuary
. Behind him, the pack realized the quarry might escape, and its own fury gave it speed. The howls drew closer. Gray saw the door open. People began to emerge, the lunch crowd drawn outside by the noise. One of them was John Porter. He gestured at Gray, egging him on. Gray pumped his legs faster, squeezing the stone for adrenaline even as he was reaching the wall of his sprint. Someone held the door open for him, and he barrelled through. He sagged against the bar, gasping, and looked back. There was a scuffle at the entrance. Porter and three other men were holding back the media tsunami. “
We’re closed
,” Porter bellowed. Gray had often heard Porter raise his voice, but never in anger.

“Like shit you are,” a reporter snarled and tried to barge past.

Porter was a man with no media fears. His fist smashed hammer and brick into the man’s face. The reporter slumped. His screams were nasal from blood and shattered cartilage. The rest of the pack drew back, skittish at the sight of blood from one of their own. That wasn’t a regulation play. “This is private property,” Porter told them. His arms were folded, and he was the Colossus of Rhodes, back on the scene and right pissed off. A photographer made the mistake of finding the courage to get in his face. “The Management,” Porter said. He smashed the camera from the man’s hands. The lens shattered on the pavement. “Reserves the right.” He grabbed the photographer’s collar. “To refuse service.” He threw the photographer. Gray had never seen that done before. The man was actually in the air for a good second. Porter stepped back in, shut the door, and locked it. He nodded once, as if agreeing with himself, and applause followed him back to his post.

His breath beginning to even out, Gray settled himself on a stool and his elbows on the counter top. “Thank you,” he said to Porter.

Porter’s laugh carried an extra dollop of satisfaction. “Thank
you
.” He opened and closed a fist. “Never thought a bit of violence could be so satisfying.” He glanced out the window. “I think you’ll be here a while. Get you anything?”

“Ploughman’s and a pint of Guinness.” He hadn’t had breakfast. Now he felt ravenous.

“Nothing like exercise to work up the appetite, eh?” Porter asked, laughing.

“I’d say more the relief of escaping your enemies.”

“Ah.” No laugh. Porter lowered his voice. “They’re not all on the outside,” he said.

Gray looked around. “Is Patrick here?” He’d been expecting Hudson to turn up since their phone conversation. The campaign to hunt him down and drag him back to the fold would be protracted and heartfelt. Gray wondered how much bruising their friendship could take. He’d done most of the bruising himself. He felt a rush of guilt.

“Not yet today,” Porter answered.

“But he is in town, I take it.”

“Came in just before closing last night.” He placed a glass by Gray’s elbow.

“Let me guess. He left a message that I could find him at the Nelson.” Porter nodded. Gray wondered if Hudson would give up and go home if Gray avoided him long enough. More guilt at the hope, more shame.
Coward
, he thought. He knew that Hudson would not go. His friendship ran too deep.
Not really worthy, are you? No. I’m not.
He shoved the remorse away to deal with later. “So who is my enemy here?” he asked Porter.

“Here she comes now.” The barman pointed. “She’s good. I don’t know how she found out you were a regular, but she knows.”

“Hardly a state secret,” Gray said. He watched the woman approach. She was in her fifties and looked like one of those people who appeared athletic without ever actually engaging in sports. Her salt-and-pepper hair was swept back and cut short. Her features were narrow, and her eyes looked as though they had seen the best bullshit the world had to offer and had stopped being fooled by it decades ago.

She stopped in front of him. “Lord Gray,” she said.

“Do I know you?”

“You’ve heard my voice on your answering machine, I’m sure. You’re not easy to get hold of.”

“That isn’t accidental.” He hoped she would take the hint.

She smiled tightly, indicating that she had caught his meaning and was going to ignore it. “Found you, anyway, and I’ll lay money that you’re going to wish we never met. Louise Meacham. Central Intelligence Agency.”

Gray absorbed this. “Are you supposed to just come right out and admit that?” he asked finally.

“Not in the normal course of events.” She shrugged. “But I seem to be doing that quite a bit lately.”

“I don’t suppose the normal course of events would bring you here.”

“Correct. Did you know that Pete Adams worked for the Agency?”

He shook his head. “Not until the story was in the news.”

“Guess why I’m here.”

He sipped his Guinness. “I would really rather not. I have the horrible feeling I’d guess right.”

“I want access to your house to conduct a full investigation.”

“The police already did that.”

“You’re going to force me to say it, aren’t you? A paranormal investigation.”

“
Scientific
, no doubt.” He gestured towards the window. “You put those bastards up to this?” His blood pressure rose.