The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (55 page)

The painters and the plumbers and the electricians were fetched by a truck which called for them every afternoon at half past five. Roger usually came home tired, dirty and hungry at about seven, and in the interval Mrs. Amery, after washing and changing her dress, devoted herself to the preparation of supper, expending thought and ingenuity in her effort to offer the child at the same time what he liked and what she considered good for him. But on the evening of the day when she had found the rosebuds she did not expect Roger until eight, and at six o’clock, after her daily round of tidying, she sat down in the small room which she had taken for a sitting-room, put her feet up on the sofa, took a book in her hand and prepared for an hour’s rest.

She never opened the book. For at first, with a faint frown on her broad forehead and a rather worried expression in her childish blue eyes, she reverted to the problem of the flowers. Could it really be that she had gathered them herself and so utterly have forgotten having done so? If so she trembled for her sanity; and not for the first time she remembered her Great-aunt Vinny, who had died in a private lunatic asylum.

It was a warm afternoon, sultry with the heat of late July, and the window behind Mrs. Amery’s head was wide open. Suddenly, as she reclined on the sofa, thinking her uncomfortable thoughts and yet trying not to worry because she had been warned that worry was the one thing she must avoid, she felt a sharp cold draught on the back of her neck, as though a wet bandage had been pressed against her curls.

She looked at the door to see whether it had swung open and caused a through current of air. But the door was closed, and a glance at the window showed her that the shabby net curtains – doomed for the rag-bag – hung motionless. Yet the sharp draught continued and it was chilly enough to send a shudder down her spine. Springing to her feet, she slammed down the window. Then, returning to the sofa, she sat down again and inserted one finger in the book.

But the queer feeling at the back of her neck persisted, and now, as well as the sense of cold there was a sense of movement, as though a very cold hand were gently lifting and caressing the curls of her hair. Instinctively she put up her hand, felt it warm against her own warm neck, and in the same instant felt the cold touch run over her shoulder, over the short sleeve of her dress, down on to the bare flesh of her arm and finally fasten on her hand. It was, save for its coldness, exactly the gesture and touch that a lover might use.

But in that terrible moment Mrs. Amery was too panic-stricken to recognize the caressing quality of the touch. She sat quite still, even her breathing stopped by the force of her fear. Then, gasping, like a woman who has just been dragged back from drowning in icy water, she shook her hand violently and the cold clasp loosened – as a warm human hand might, finding itself unwelcome, relax its hold – and Mrs. Amery, on legs that shook so violently that they only just bore her weight, stumbled towards the door. As she did so she heard, beyond all question of doubt or argument, the sound of a sigh, heavy with longing, wistful, frustrated.

A few staggering steps carried her into the kitchen, mundane and modern, with its recently connected electric stove and purring refrigerator. A few more brought her outside the back door and to the tradesmen’s entrance. Here, in the warm sunshine, amid the scent of new paint and freshly sawn wood, she paused for a moment, drawing deep steadying breaths and leaning her hand on the kitchen window-sill. She was still shuddering violently and her face and hands were wet with perspiration. But she had recovered sufficiently to begin to take stock of her position. And awkward enough she found it. A glance at her watch told her that it was only just quarter past six, and Roger would not be back until eight. She knew that she would never dare to re-enter the house alone; and the supper was not even started.

She drew out her handkerchief and dried her face and hands, walked round to the front of the house and down to the wrought-iron railings which divided the front lawn from the village street. Almost opposite the proprietor of the little general shop was leisurely putting up his shutters; two late shoppers stood in the doorway gossiping. A dog lay on the path, lazily scratching his fleas. Away to the right two little girls turned a rope while a third skipped inexpertly. The complete normality of the scene made Mrs. Amery, who was given to self-derision, feel very foolish. Suppose anyone asked why she was standing here when she should be in the kitchen making a macaroni cheese. And suppose she replied that she had felt cold all down her arm and on her hand, and had heard a sigh. How they would laugh . . . those women, and the shopkeeper putting up his shutters, and the children; why, even the dog would laugh and point out that after hard exercise one did cool off suddenly. And the sigh? Why, her own breathing, a gasp of foolish, imaginative fear.

She stood there until the church clock at the end of the street chimed the half hour, and the women shoppers, each with a start of surprise, darted away in opposite directions. And by that time she had almost convinced herself that her imagination or her state of health was responsible for her experience. Almost, but not quite. Had she been quite convinced she would, being a conscientious little woman, have turned and re-entered the house and put on the macaroni. Instead, she turned towards the direction of the Fentons’ house, and walked, with slow deliberation, almost counting each step, to meet Roger. At the imposing gateway, which she recognized from her son’s laconic description, she paused. She was too diffident to inflict her company uninvited, and the Fentons sounded rather lordly. So she sat on a bank near the gateway until she heard Roger’s footsteps – unmistakable to the ear of love – and then rose up and pretended that she had reached the gateway just as he did.

Roger’s sole comment was: “You shouldn’t have come so far, Mum. It’s the hell of a walk.” His after-thought, “I wish I’d got a bike,” set Mrs. Amery to her familiar occupation of counting pennies.

She dreaded the night. Suppose, she thought (just as she had, earlier, supposed an argument in the opposite direction), suppose that she had not imagined that moment in the little sitting-room; if such a thing could happen in the clear light of late afternoon, what might not the night bring? She longed, with a longing as keen as that of a thirsty man for water, to suggest to Roger that the door between their bedrooms should stand open. But she dared not do it. She was certain by this time that she was a sick woman, the victim of an inflamed imagination, and she was really terrified lest some germ of her malaise might infect the child. She was always – had been for three long years – morbidly conscious that a boy without a father suffers a severe disadvantage, she shrank from the thought that she might try to make Roger take his father’s place in her life, and at the same time she shrank from pampering him unduly, or making him precocious, or timid. So she allowed him to chatter his way into his own room and shut the door, and decorations have been awarded for less courage than went into her last “good night”.

She lay down, with every nerve tense, and, keeping her light burning, read, with vagrant attention, her book, until from sheer exhaustion she fell asleep and woke to find Roger by her bedside. In one hand he carried a cup of scalding tea and in the other two very full-blown roses. The expression on his face was very queer; half shamed, and yet reminiscent of himself at four years old before self-consciousness dawned. He thrust the cup into her hand and laid the flowers on the bed-cover. “Thought it’d save you getting them yourself,” he muttered, with a smile which redeemed the sentence from gruffness. Her heart melted in a wave of adoration and understanding. Of course, he was shy. All nice boys were; they dreaded committing themselves; had a horror of being thought “soft”. Sniffing her roses, sipping her tea, remembering, self-derisively, her overnight fears, Mrs. Amery was happy again.

Yet when, at half past five, the truck roared away, leaving a vacuum of silence behind it, Mrs. Amery, although by this time self-convinced that her fears of yesterday were groundless, avoided the little sitting-room and stayed in the kitchen. After she had prepared the supper she sat down on a chair by the window and began to darn one of Roger’s socks. Deliberately she held her thoughts in rein, pondering the differences in the ways boys had of wearing out their hose, some at the toe, others at the heel, others again at the ball of the foot. Yet it was with less surprise than with a sense of foredooming that she became aware after a few moments of the onset of fear. The silence of the house, the expanse of its emptiness, the mere fact of her own physical isolation, began to bear in upon her like enemies.

She fought the pressure, darning madly, counting the thrusts of her needle until a voice in her mind said, clearly and accusingly, “You’re counting because you’re afraid, you’re afraid, you’re afraid.” And at that Mrs. Amery halted her needle and sat quite still, bringing everything that was in her, sense, reason, self-scorn and courage, to the business of meeting and withstanding her fear. She was still trying to mock herself into sanity when the half-finished sock was lifted gently from her hand and laid in her lap. And as she stared at the moving sock with incredulous, terror-filled eyes, she became conscious of a scent which, later on, she identified as that of hair-oil.

Her stumbling, staggering exit was a repetition of that of the day before; but, being already in the kitchen, she was nearer the blessed sanctuary of the open air. Yet today she was more deeply frightened and took longer to recover herself. She felt an urgent need for human company, and stood for a while looking up and down the village street, wishing that there were some house where her sudden arrival would be welcome and unquestioned. But there was none, for she had made no friends.

Then suddenly she remembered a name and an address which she had glanced at, unthinking and unnoticing, which had somehow become photographed on her mind. It was the name and address of a woman whom Mrs. Stanhope had selected as a possible scrubber. It was a legitimate errand, and, controlling herself with an effort, Mrs. Amery went in search of the woman. She was an old woman, with gnarled hands and stooping shoulders. But within their network of wrinkles her eyes were lively and intelligent. She would be glad, she said, to do any amount of scrubbing, and having said that, she embarked, almost as though she detected in Mrs. Amery a willing listener, upon a tangled maze of reminiscences, her own life-story, her memories of Mrs. Stanhope and the work she had done for her at various times, and, most potent memory of all, Mr. Edward.

“A rare one for the ladies was Mr. Edward; right down to the time he died. Making love to his nurse, they say he was when the last seizure come on him. Holding her hand, he was.” The bright old eyes sparkled with the suggestion that, in their time, they too had had their share of Mr. Edward’s attention. There flashed through Mrs. Amery’s facile imagination a vision of a neat, black-eyed, smiling, bestreamered maid-servant lingering in the passage or on the stairs of the house from which she herself had just fled. Had that touch . . . ah, but it would have been warm and human then! . . . fallen upon that shoulder, now so bowed, rested on that hand, now so gnarled?

With mechanical politeness and the smile which was almost automatic, Mrs. Amery took leave of the crone and walked away between the bright borders of the cottage garden. She felt a little dizzy, so rapidly was her mind working. One small nodule of incredulous common sense was trying to reject the fantastic conclusions which nervous dread, romanticism and remembered experience were forcing upon her. After all, misers haunted the sites of their buried hoards, murderers walked by the scenes of their crimes; why should not an inveterate philanderer be earthbound too? Earthbound! Terrible word. Terrible in its implications, terrible even in itself if repeated.

She walked rapidly, trying to outstrip her fear; but Roger met her before she was half way to the Fentons’; he too was hurrying, sweating slightly.

“Thought I’d start early and save you a bit of a walk,” he explained.

“What made you think I’d come?” She was pleased to hear her voice so light and normal.

“Just guessed,” he said. He linked his arm with hers, as he did sometimes when they were alone, and chattered on, describing his day’s exploits. She walked alongside him, wishing with all her heart that they were going to the station, going to take a room in the village, going anywhere rather than back into that haunted house. The idea of retreating without putting up a further struggle hung tantalizingly in her mind; but she had the twenty pounds to earn; and over her there hung not only the idea of the money, and of Mrs. Stanhope’s wrath, but behind that, Mrs. Bigmore. If she should let down Mrs. Bigmore’s favourite friend, bring one of that masterful woman’s plans to ridicule . . . why finish the thought? It was an unthinkable hypothesis.

But on that night she cajoled Roger into making the final round of doors and windows with her; and then, almost sick with self-contempt, and trying desperately to keep the note of pleading out of her voice, arranged for the communicating doors between their rooms to stay open, giving the heat as an excuse. Nothing untoward happened; but once, as she lay miserably watchful and wakeful, the child called, “Whassa matter, Mum?” in a voice thick with sleep. She called back, “Nothing. Why?” He muttered indistinguishably and in the morning denied any memory of the moment.

For two days and nights she managed, by little ruses and craftinesses, to avoid being in the house alone for a moment. But they were two days of misery. She was conscious now, in a way which was new, of being watched, reproachfully and with an increasing malevolence. It was as though some actual suitor, finding himself constantly rebuffed, were feeling love turn to hatred. And at the same time she knew that there were human eyes watching her too. Those big blue eyes of Roger’s, capable of such frankness and at the same time of such secretiveness, were beginning to dwell upon her with a kind of furtive interest. He was not blind, she felt, to her loss of interest in food, or to the ravages which broken sleep can inflict upon a face no longer young. Once he asked if her head ached. And on each afternoon, just before the truck drove away, he had arrived home, breathless and hot, giving some excuse for his early arrival and yet, it seemed, rather out of temper.