The Cheesemaker's House (23 page)

“That sounds like a good plan.” I hadn't noticed Christopher come into the room, but I am glad he is here. He sits down on the chair next to his desk.

“You don't understand,” Owen sobs, “I'm beyond help.”

“Everyone feels like that when they're in crisis,” Christopher explains soothingly. “It's part of what a crisis is. But people do come through it, and you will too.”

“No – no, I mean it. It's been going on too long – it'll never change now, not ever.”

I feel too choked to speak. I thought I knew what heartbreak was before, but I was wrong.

Christopher looks at me. “Maybe we should phone his GP now, and not leave it until Monday?”

Owen looks up, startled. “No – you can't do that. They'll lock me up.”

“Why would they do that?” Christopher probes gently.

“Because I don't know what's real.”

“In what way?” Christopher asks, but Owen just starts to sob again. I pull him towards me and he doesn't resist. I circle him with my arms as he burrows his wet face into my jumper. And I am scared beyond words. Yet, at the same time, I don't know – I feel a kind of strength. I think perhaps it is emanating from Christopher but when I look at him he seems broken too.

“The help that you need will be forthcoming,” I find myself saying. Christopher stares at me, goggle-eyed. I have the strange sensation of looking down on the three of us, as though from above, but at the same time I know I am still in my own body because I can feel Owen's shuddering warmth.

“You are close to the end of the pathway,” I continue. “Bury Thomas's child and you will be giving peace across the generations. The line of the charmers will not end.”

Christopher is now open mouthed and we look at each other in horror. “Alice,” he whispers. “That wasn't like you speaking at all.”

Suddenly Owen looks up. “You heard it too? Oh, God – tell me you heard it too.”

We both nod.

“And I've seen them,” I breathe.

Owen is shaking from head to toe. “Who have you seen? Alice, you must tell me.”

“The…the old woman…and the young woman in grey – she's Alice, Alice Fulton, the cheesemaker, and Thomas; he looks so like you I thought he was you but...” I stop. “But you know that – because you've seen him too.”

“I've seen Alice and I've seen Thomas,” he whispers.

Christopher leans forwards. “So this is what you told me about, Alice, when Owen disappeared, that you'd both seen this…Thomas…only then you were calling him the other Owen.”

“That's right. I didn't know anything about him then but I had to find out.”

“But you've seen Alice too? And Mother Winter?” Owen's voice is desperate, pleading.

So he knows the old woman is Thomas' mother – I was right. But how I know, or how I've seen what I've seen, or felt what I've felt…the enormity of it is beginning to hit home but I shut it away. You could drive yourself mad with it if you didn't. Instead I just nod in answer to Owen's question.

Christopher is clearly fascinated. “So you've both seen these people, quite independently?”

Owen's voice is very quiet. “I've been seeing Alice since I was a child. My Gran knew – she went along with it – or she knew who she was anyway.” I think about Richard playing with Alice too.

Christopher leans forwards. “What did you do together? What did you talk about?”

“We were kids, Chris, tiny kids. We just met on the green and played. When I went to school she sort of faded away – I was too young to remember, really. I had forgotten about her completely, but when Gran was ill, she came back. I…I used to sleep in a chair in Gran's room and one night Alice was there, sitting at my feet. She was someone I could talk to about it all, you know, about not being able to ease things for Gran better...” He grinds to a halt, close to tears again.

“Go on,” Christopher urges him. “Finish the story.”

“Just before Gran finally passed away Alice brought Mother Winter with her. It…it wasn't like with Alice…Alice, well, I'd really see and hear her – I can describe how she looks and her voice, but with Mother, at first, I just seemed to know things – about the herbs – things I hadn't thought of to help Gran. And they worked.

“After Gran died Alice stayed with me for a while, but then she went too, not long after the funeral. It was…well, never mind how it was…but I never saw her again. But Mother – she's here now, she's always here, she's at my shoulder...” Then he does break down and I gather him to me again. These people have haunted him, driven him to the brink of madness, and I suddenly feel very angry. I want to scream at them to leave him alone, but then I realise that they will – just as soon as the baby is properly buried.

“When we bury the child, she will have her peace.” This time they are my words, and my voice. Even if I cannot be completely sure where the thought comes from.

“She's pushing me, Alice – she's inside my head. Like before – like when we first found him – it was as if I'd become someone else – and recently, more and more – I couldn't tell…if I was me, or...” He grinds to a halt.

“It's no wonder you thought you were going mad,” says Christopher. “What you're describing sounds just like a psychotic episode.”

“Exactly!” cries Owen. “That's what I thought it was.” He buries his head in his hands. “Only I still can't really be sure – am I just imagining Alice saying she's seen them too? Is that part of it? Or is she just saying it to humour me? I…I still can't tell what's real.”

“They're not but I am. I even know their names for God's sake, I wouldn't know that if I was just humouring you. And it's not just me – Richard's seen them too.”

“Richard?” Owen sounds surprised.

“Well it wasn't you he saw jump off the bridge, was it?”

“No, but...”

We look at each other, at a total loss. Even for clever folks like Christopher and Owen this is a lot to take in, but for me it is like my brain is going into overload. My teeth start to chatter, even though the room is stuffy and warm.

Owen puts a comforting arm around me. “Oh Alice,” he says.

I try to pull myself together, for his sake more than anything. “I'll be alright. I'm just very tired I think.”

“Me too.” He takes a deep breath. “Come on, we'd better go.”

Christopher is hesitant. “Are you sure you'll be OK? You can both stay in the spare room here if you like.”

I stand up. “No, I have to go and see to William.”

Owen stands too. “I'll walk you home.”

The frost is thick on the ground and we don't have our coats. Instead we tuck ourselves up in each other's arms and walk briskly through the silent village, lost in our own thoughts. I don't speak until we are at my back door.

“Stay with me, Owen.” It's not a question – it's a command.

He nods.

It isn't even light when William starts to whine. Owen is fast asleep next to me; he tossed and turned for ages and I am glad he's finally found some rest. I just curled up on my edge of the bed and stayed there. He didn't seem to want to touch me, not even a little cuddle.

As I reluctantly push myself off the pillow my shoulder buckles in pain and I am left sitting on the side of the bed clasping it and wondering why it hurts so much.

The moment I hear Owen ask if I'm OK, one of the most unreal parts of last night comes back to me and I remember him throwing me against the altar rail – although why my shoulder is only hurting now is beyond me. Adrenalin, probably. I'd better drum up some more of it from somewhere.

“I must have knocked my shoulder when I slipped in the church.”

“When I pushed you, you mean,” he replies.

“I was hoping you were so far out of things that you wouldn't remember.”

“Oh, I remember alright,” he says. “Come on, let me take a look.”

His fingers are warm against my skin. “It's a really nasty bruise,” he continues, “But at least it's coming out.”

“There's some arnica in the bathroom cabinet.”

Gently he pulls my pyjama top up. “I can do better than arnica. Tell you what; you have a nice warm shower. I'll go home and feed Kylie, and come back in about an hour with some ointment.”

“OK.” I swivel around on the bed to face him – he looks awful. “Owen, how are you feeling?”

He shrugs. “A bit numb, to be honest.”

“That's not really surprising though, is it?”

“I don't suppose it is.”

To be fair, I feel a bit numb myself.

Less than an hour later I hear Owen's key in the door and William rushes from the kitchen to the garden room, barking and snarling. Rather than trying to make peace Owen ignores him and eventually he stops and slinks away to his basket.

Owen's hair is still wet from his shower and he has shaved, although not made a very good fist of it. There is a cut on his chin and a good sized chunk of stubble he's missed on his neck. I notice that it is flecked with grey.

He puts his keys and a little plastic jar of ointment on the table in front of me.

“Compress first,” he says and starts to fill the kettle with water. I nod.

Neither of us seems to know what to say and he busies himself preparing the herbs for the infusion while I gaze glumly at the table. As I stare I find myself looking at his keys, and in particular a small, worn, bronze one. I vaguely recognise it as the one that opens his herb chest, but there is something more – something else about it.

In a flash of comprehension I scramble out of my chair and into the snug. There, on the floor by the sofa, is the little plastic pocket the archaeologists sent, containing the key that was around the baby's neck. As I pick it up, Owen is behind me.

“Alice – what's wrong?”

I hand the pocket to him and I can see from his face he knows the key.

“Where did they find it?” His voice is hoarse.

I can hardly answer. “It was around the baby's neck. That's what the scraps of ribbon are.”

“There's only ever been one key to the chest,” he whispers.

“It looks the same,” I venture.

“It is the same. It has to be.”

“Shall we try it and see?”

He nods. “Come on.”

Poultice and ointment forgotten, we pull on our coats and rush up the village to his house. In the dining room he hauls the chest out of the sideboard and puts it on the table. My hands are shaking too much to fit the key in the lock, so he takes it from me and tries it himself. Although it goes in smoothly, at first it refuses to turn.

“The lock's worn, but the key isn't.” Owen takes it out and compares it closely with his own and I can see the edges of his are smoother.

He puts the key in again and eases it gently this way and that, and eventually we hear a click as the mechanism shifts. Slowly, he opens the lid of the box.

“Thomas,” I whisper, “it was Thomas's key – he must have buried it with his baby.”

“But how did I end up with the chest?” Owen muses, almost to himself.

“The same way you became a charmer – it was passed down through the generations.”

He shakes his head firmly. “I'm not a charmer. I heal people with herbs, that's all.” There is an uncomfortable silence and then he continues, “But if Thomas died, and his child died, how was the knowledge passed down?”

“Perhaps Mother Winter had other children?”

“Maybe Thomas did. If Gran's story was right and he was a bit of a ladies' man...”

Suddenly I remember the riding. “He…he was. I saw him being jeered by a crowd of villagers because of it. I found out later it was called a riding and...”

Owen cuts across me. “How do you mean, you saw him?”

I blush to my roots. “I don't really know. Margaret calls them visions, but I find that word too scary. Christopher said something about echoes from the past.”

“Oh, Alice – why didn't you tell me?”

But that is just too much and I turn on him angrily. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because you would have thought I was stark, staring mad. It's what I believed myself.”

“But I was so worried about you. I was eating myself up with it – it was…the worst thing in my life ever, I think.”

Owen gazes at the floor. “I'm sorry, Alice.” He sounds like a man defeated.

I turn away from him and look out of the window, but instead of the wintry garden I see a tiny white skull on the barn floor, illuminated by a shaft of evening sun. I close my eyes.

Eventually Owen puts his hands gently on my shoulders. “Do you know what I'm finding hardest to deal with? I've never believed in ghosts. I'm a scientist – logically, they can't exist. Last night I was lying awake and while there was a part of me that was full of relief that I wasn't going crazy I still wasn't able to accept this is something supernatural. I think I only slept because I was so exhausted by it all – and because you were there, of course.”

I am close to tears but not entirely sorrowful ones; there is a new honesty in Owen's voice, a tentative openness.

“Perhaps that's why you thought it was all in your own head in the first place. When it first happened to me I did wonder that myself but as I spoke to other people I realised I was in the minority not believing in the paranormal. And anyway, what does paranormal mean? Just something that's outside of the ordinary, by definition it's something we don't understand. As a scientist you must accept there are things we haven't found out yet.”

“I thought it was all inside my head; that I was completely psychotic. You sometimes read about these things...”

I wrap my arms around his waist. “But you're not – it isn't just you. We're in this together and if nothing else, I think we understand each other better because of it. And we know what we've got to do to make it stop.”

“But how do we know, Alice? By what means?”

I start to shake my head but he continues, words tumbling out one after the other.

“Something's hounded me, Alice, something I've come to know as Mother Winter. From the moment I said I'd help you to kill our unborn child she was in my head telling me it was wrong. Then when Richard found the baby's skeleton it felt like my retribution; I had to atone for what I'd done – I just had to – there was no other way to describe it. And she said I had to have you – possess you – and it sounded like it was a perversion of my own mind, I wanted you so much. So I had to resist – oh, Alice – it's been so hard but I had to because it wasn't fair on you because I was going mad – and then she'd be on at me day and night…Alice, I can't take any more – I want my life back.”

“And when we bury the baby, you will have. Then you can get on with your life – or our lives, if that's what you want.”

He is looking at me as though trying to imprint my face on his brain. Finally he pulls me to him. “More than anything,” he murmurs into my hair.