The final Saturday night will see just one person left in the house. The winner, if you like, although spending a night alone in Knap Hall doesn’t sound to Grayle like any kind of prize. In theory, this is the resident whose opinions best represent the attitude of the viewers. Next Sunday, when it’s all over, they all go back into the house for the final revelations about Knap Hall, and the last night will be a review of the week, intercut with clips from this session.
‘Evictions,’ Defford says, ‘are usually the most exciting moments in
Big Brother
, but even more significant for us, in
that they’ll show which way the nation’s leaning – towards belief or scepticism. Yes, there’ll be votes for people the viewers just want to keep in the house for entertainment value. But not too many, we hope. At the end of the day, it’s the eighth person – the house – that wins or loses.’
Defford sits down.
There’s applause. Grayle slides out into a night fresh from the rain, full of star-spatter now and no illusion of control.
38
Fragrant
‘
SO
,’
ANDERSON SAYS
. ‘Did she or didn’t she?’
One small lamp burns weakly in the sitting room of the bastard bungalow. Marcus is in his dressing gown, feet up on an old church hassock, Malcolm alongside.
Not what he was expecting from Underhill. Bloody well wasn’t.
‘Never thought of her as particularly psychic. Very few of these New Age types ever are. They
think
they are, but there are times when all that incense and tinkling windchimes bollocks actually works the other way. A barrier.’
‘But she’s no’ that way any more, Marcus.
You
achieved that.’
Anderson hands him cocoa, which he doesn’t like but arteries or something apparently do.
‘But the poor bitch has been pushed back into the liminal world, and I did that, too. Me. Why? I’ll tell you. Because when you hear the word “television”, you think it can’t be real. Land of make-believe. Essentially harmless.’
‘All right.’ Anderson sits down. ‘Let’s take this slowly, examine the possibilities one by one.’
Marcus sips the cocoa with distaste. The nursing profession, of course, has always had its liminal moments. It’s nurses rather than doctors who share the weird beauty of death, inhabit the halfway-house.
‘Go on,’ he says.
‘All right, starting wi’ the rational, is it some kind of déjà vu?’
‘What, you mean Underhill learns that Harry Ansell’s topped himself on the end of a rope in a dark wood and imagines having had a precognitive experience in his former bedroom?’
Anderson shrugs.
‘If so, what’s that imply about her current mental state?’ Marcus says. ‘Recurrence of manic depression?’
Which he likes to think never quite set in. Likes to think they caught it in time. Is quite proud of the way two years of coalface-journalism gave Underhill a seemingly protective shell.
‘Or,’ he says, ‘is it something in the atmosphere at Knap Hall, some condition of the place, that plays with you? And to what extent is that conditioned by what’s happened there in the past? I mean as distinct from locational influences, geophysical stress.’
‘You hate terms like “geophysical stress”.’ Anderson activates her e-cig. ‘We both know what you
want
it to be. Why not just accept it, Marcus?’
He peers at her down his glasses. It worries him that she actually seems to enjoy life here. She’s had her hair dyed crimson which, though he’s never going to admit it, he rather likes.
‘All right,’ he says, ‘let’s say it
is
. Let’s say that Knap Hall is… polluted. In which context, I really can’t see we’re looking at what remains of the fragrant Parr. That has to be wishful thinking on the part of the Ansell woman. Even Lewis thinks that. So that leaves us with—’
‘How do you know she wis fragrant?’
‘Fuck’s that mean?’
‘I’m no’ entirely sure. But you’re the one’s always going on about no’ taking history at face value.’
Marcus thinks about it. Point taken. Perhaps he should look into Parr’s last days at Sudeley Castle, even though he can’t believe there’s anything historians have failed to find in this most poked-over period of English history. But then, bastard historians are selective.
‘Also,’ he says, ‘we have this man Fishe, to whose activities the word “fragrant” can hardly be applied.’
He’s told her the stories Underhill had from the woman in Winchcombe, but Anderson still looks sceptical.
‘Did he even exist?’
‘What’s the matter with you tonight?’
‘You just wannae be involved, don’t you? Indirectly. Which is the only way ever works for you. You need tae be operating some kind of… subversive rearguard action.’
‘Oh, for—’
‘
You
…’ Anderson’s up in her chair, waving the e-cig, ‘were never gonnae work for the TV, not in a million bloody years. You were just waiting for them to leave you an opening. Like dissing wee Grayle, so you can claim it’s your responsibility for gettin’ her into it in the first place. In fact, I wouldnae—’
‘Balls. And yes, he did exist.’
‘Who?’
‘Fishe. Tenant farmer at what is now Knap Hall, 1756 to 1789. Nothing else about him on the Internet. Not that I can find, anyway. Not going to give up, obviously.’
‘Got yourself a purpose now, I can see it in your evil wee eyes. I’m just trying tae make sure you don’t dive in too far, too fast, you know?’
‘If you don’t dive in too far, bugger all use diving in at all.’
‘Wis she scared?’
‘Who?’
Marcus looking into the wobbly lamplight. The bulb’s on the way out, starting to whine. It’s an old bulb, not energy-saving but at least isn’t full of bastard mercury. Malcolm growls.
‘Grayle.’ Anderson leans forward. ‘When she saw whatever she saw, wis she scared? That’s always your key factor, is it not?’
‘Could hardly bring herself to talk about it.’
‘That’s no’ normal. For Grayle.’
‘Bloody isn’t.’
The lamp bulb… this has happened to him before, he thinks stupidly, when he’s approaching something odd. Or maybe it’s some warning device in the ear canal.
‘Been in the attic,’ he says.
‘Aye, I noticed.’
‘Going through the files, all the old
Vision
correspondents.
Thought
I remembered the name Rutter from somewhere. Used to send us snippets of Cotswold folklore about wells and saints. Before Underhill’s time. Think if I phoned her, it’s possible she might remember me?’
Anderson eyes him in the dimming light.
‘Wid anyone ever forget you, Marcus?’
39
Death canal
A YOUNG PRODUCTION
assistant with a half-grown beard and cans around his neck, takes Cindy into the ante-room to the plastic tunnel.
‘My,’ Cindy says, ‘how exciting is
this
?’
He’s been here before, of course, while waiting for his interview with Grayle, and the young man looks at him as if he might be taking the piss. Cindy remains solemn.
The windowless room has a few chairs and equipment including a monitor on a desk, its screen dithering over half-formed images. He glimpses firelight on polished panelling.
‘You’re in second, Mr Lewis, which means you get to watch the start of the recording.’
‘What a privilege.’
‘I might as well tell you the first person to go in is Eloise, the singer and TV presenter. She’s in the tunnel now.’
The boy looks at him in search of recognition. Fortunately, Cindy once guested on
The House Wizard
, an edition involving the cleansing of a former maisonette where a woman had stabbed her husband to death in the bath. He recalls Eloise telling him miserably that viewing figures had been disappointing and there probably wouldn’t be another series after this. Well, these things happen. What looks like a good idea in concept often falls flat in execution. Leo Defford has good reason to be on edge.
‘And do I get to watch the fair Eloise crossing the threshold?’
‘Yeah, sure, no problem.’
‘Thank you.’
Cindy takes a seat in front of the monitor. He’s been told it won’t be especially warm in there, so he’s wearing his tweed jacket and skirt with thick leggings and a scarf. And his beret, of course.
In the monitor, he can hear static and the criss-cross of studio voices, and then, in isolation, the words ‘sixty seconds’. The boy adjusts his headphones, looks excited. In the gallery, they’ll all be watching the big digital clock. It’s only a recording for the opening programme of
Big Other
tomorrow night, but it’s live
now
, with all the tension this implies. Nobody wants a second take because of some avoidable cock-up.
The screen goes black, as the countdown starts from ten.
Then it’s not simply a black screen but the view down a dim passage. The emptiness of which emphasizes the difference between this and
Big Brother
, where you have masses of young people bouncing up and down with excitement at the proximity of real, live celebrities… the level of whose insecurities, at this moment, would astound them.
‘Seven… six… five… four… three…’
Silence as the screen comes to attention. A distant light, and old-house noises, probably amplified. Faint creaks, footfalls, maybe amplified a little. Candles on the walls are protected by glass funnels, of a kind that wouldn’t have been around in Tudor times, but that doesn’t lessen the effect, as the camera peers at them, circles of lights expanding and dissolving.
It goes on for quite a while, far longer than necessary. Tomorrow, the commentary will be added – a sonorous scene-setter, voiced up, Cindy’s been told, by Matthew Barnes, a one-time radio newsreader more often heard nowadays on lower-key TV commercials. Barnes will be a muted, neutral voice, not a personality. Never upstage the talent.
Leave all that to
Big Other
.
Movement at last. A woman comes out of shadow, walking slowly down the passage, her back to the camera. She has on a long black skirt which makes it look as though she’s gliding. A
black crocheted shawl is around her shoulders. Something bulky hangs from her right hand.
At the bottom of the passage is a door of age-greyed oak, with iron studs, long metal hinges half absorbed into the wood. The door is ajar, and the gap is the source of the light. It’s all traditional, but nicely done. The woman doesn’t touch the door. She turns slowly towards the camera. Her head’s bowed so you can’t see her face for near-black hair.
‘Cold,’ she mutters crossly. ‘Why do these places always have to be so bloody cold?’
She puts down what she was carrying, and it stands beside her in the shadows, like a child all in black. It’s a guitar case.
The beardie extends an arm.
‘Time to go in, Mr Lewis. Good luck.’
‘Thank you, boy.’
The tunnel squeaks in the night breeze. Cindy walks into what he supposes is a kind of birth canal for
Big Other
. The phrase ‘death canal’ passes through his head and makes him smile. Well, he likes to think it’s a smile, as the tunnel darkens.
It’s been done so well that he hardly notices when plastic turns to stone and he’s inside the house.
He doesn’t notice the camera at all, which is
very
clever, as he must now be in the stone-walled passage in which he’d seen Eloise just a few minutes ago.
The difference is that there’s a larger light at the bottom, the door thrown wide. He thinks he remembers now: a couple of steps into a hallway or ante-room and then the door into the chamber which was Trinity’s large parlour or reception room, with its inglenook.
In which there is now evidently a fire. He sees it for real now, lighting the panels, flickering on the stones.
Cindy stops for a moment, listens, as if some predictive part of him knew the scream would come.
PART FIVE
… after…
I realize that all this will mean less than nothing to the sceptical reader. Well, that’s all right. It is the sceptics’ right to disbelieve, just as it is mine to print what I believe. I am not proselytizing on behalf of ghosts. You can lead a full, happy and useful life without believing in them. But I should like to point out that scepticism is largely a negative matter. People do not believe in ghosts because they have never come across them.
Diana Norman
The Stately Ghosts of England
(1963)
40
Iscariot
YOU WOULDN’T CALL
it cosy, but…
… you almost would. Certainly in comparison with the room he first entered with Trinity on that hard, bright January day nearly three years ago, the mildewed panels all sepia-drab and the hearth dead.
The second time he was here, it was rich and rosy, all tapestry wall hangings and brocaded cushions. But that was in the summer, and there was no fire in the ingle then, either.
So this is the first time he’s seen it with logs ablaze, red ash aglow. There’s a sofa with two chairs either side arranged roughly around the inglenook. Modern furniture, distressed. Tudor seating as it would have been if they’d known about springs. Physical discomfort is not what this is about.
The room looks less cavernous, more woody, more intimate, yet more active. Could be all those unseen glass eyes in the panelling holes, in the crevices between the chocolate-bar beams, and behind the false wall where the duplicitous mirrors are reflecting flames.
He remains in the doorway, listening. The only sound in here is breathing. Steady, controlled breathing, the kind which, in Cindy’s world, is often a gateway to meditation.
Or for the quelling of emotion.
He goes in and finds Eloise hunched like a woodland animal trying to blend with the foliage. Tight into the corner where the panelling meets the oaken screen. Both arms wrapped around the solid guitar case, holding it in front of her like a riot shield.