by John Harwood
He actually listens: such a change from Owen. His parents live apart and he has a married sister in Canada. He's sharing rooms in Piccadilly with a friend-they were in the army together but he didn't want to talk about the war. I don't think there's anyone special.
15 MAY
Hugh rang to say he'd like to have another look at the Blake. I asked him to tea on Thursday and he said yes!
19 MAY
Such a wonderful day: we took our tea out to the summerhouse and talked and talked. Afterwards I said I'd walk down to the station with him and we went on a huge detour, all the way to Highgate Ponds.
I asked how he got interested in pictures and he said he'd wanted to be a painter but realised after a while he'd never be very good. Apparently having a good eye for pictures doesn't mean you can do it yourself.
I said I liked Constable which was a mistake but he was very nice about it. And it's OK to like Turner though only the blurry ones, Hugh said they were done when his eyes were going and that's how the world actually looked to him. There was a painter called Fuseli who was colour-blind, he said, and had to choose his colours by remembering where they were on his palette. He told me about a collector he knows, very rich and eccentric, who buys every picture he can find by a man called Rees, because he hates his work so much he doesn't want anyone else to see it. Because he's a collector he can't bring himself to destroy the pictures, so he keeps them locked in a damp cellar where they're slowly rotting away.
That was the only slightly creepy moment, because it reminded me of Ruthven de Vere buying up all Henry St Clair's pictures. I won't think about it any more.
On Tuesday we're going to the Tate!
24 MAY
Went to Tate to look at the Turners but I couldn't really concentrate, I was so happy. Then walked for miles along the Embankment with the sun shining on the river. I want to live by water.
6 JUNE
Cinema with Hugh. The Heiress-so exciting. Supper afterwards. He kissed me properly at last. And told me I'm beautiful. And I didn't mention Filly so it wasn't in the least like the story. I might as well admit I'm in love with him.
Somehow we got on to Iris. H. asked me whether she really believes, and so I told him about Geoffrey being killed in the last war, and how she never really got over it, and that led to our parents. He was very tactful and tentative, but I don't think he quite believed me when I said I'd never really missed them. Did Filly feel the same way, he asked, and I had to admit I didn't know, and that made me think of the story again. I wish I'd never found it.
9 JUNE
Tea with Hugh in Mayfair: a celebration. The Blake has sold for 500 guineas!
I know we've only been out a few times but he's the man I want to marry. I've never felt this way about anyone. And I'm nearly sure he feels the same.
14 JUNE
Hugh to tea here to meet F. and Iris. I couldn't put it off any longer. I didn't want to but he's been asking when am I going to meet them.
Iris was on her best behaviour-H. must have thought I'd exaggerated terribly-but when I introduced him to Beatrice -o my God Filly-I couldn't help noticing, she turned quite pale. Tea was awful. And when I said we'd go for a walk on the Heath F. asked if she could come too, and I couldn't very well say no. F. talked-I suppose he was only drawing her out, but why did he have to sound so interested in her boring job?-and I seethed, all the way up to Parliament Hill and back. And then when he kissed me goodbye at the tube he said how much he'd enjoyed it. I shan't bring him here again on a Saturday if I can help it.
F. behaved exactly like Beatrice in the story and I could see H. looking at her. But I was so tense and miserable, I can't help wondering if I brought it on myself.
17 JUNE
Today I did a very stupid thing. I started searching the house for "The Drowned Man'. To prove it doesn't exist. But not finding it only made me more afraid that it's hidden somewhere, lying in wait for H. Even Iris noticed. I didn't dare ask-one thing the spirits are quite good at is suggesting places to look. The last thing I want. I feel creepy enough as it is.
19 JUNE
H. very busy-big sale coming up-won't be able to see me this week.
No one is going to die. I just mustn't think about it any more.
28 JUNE
H. to tea again with Filly. He came to pick me up and Iris invited him before I could stop her. We had it on the terrace. H. talked about some Russian who only painted coloured squares. F. very quiet but hanging on every word.
12 JULY
H. started talking about money. Says he hasn't a bean-spends his salary before he gets it. I'm sure he was leading up to proposing. Tried everything I knew to encourage him without seeming to let on. I'm sure he will.
16 JULY
But he hasn't.
19 JULY
A perfect afternoon. Long walk with H. and then we lay down in the grass-really passionate at last. We were kissing and he was lying almost on top of me and I could feel the sun shining through his body into mine. It really is like going to heaven. He undid my dress and I thought we were going to make love properly. I didn't care about anyone seeing. I wanted him to. But then somebody's wretched dog came bounding up and H. got all embarrassed and started apologising for being carried away. I wish he hadn't.
25 JULY
H. asked me to marry him this afternoon. I'm so deliriously happy. I know I am. I wish we could keep our engagement a secret.
Later: I've locked the story in the study. I will never read it or think of it again.
28 JULY
Told Iris this afternoon. I hadn't meant to, so soon, but it just came out. So when Filly got home I had to tell her too. She said all the right things but I felt she didn't mean them.
8 AUGUST
H. here again for tea with F. We had it in the summerhouse and then he wanted us all to play tennis. I said I couldn't remember where the net was, but Filly went and dragged it out of the conservatory. If I say anything he'll think I'm jealous.
I should tell him about the story and how it haunts me. But then he'll want to read it, and he might
I must not think about it any more.
12 AUGUST
Alone with H. at last. He asked me if something was wrong and I said no, just a bit of a headache, which was exactly the wrong thing to say, because he insisted on taking me home.
I keep thinking he's not as passionate as he was a month ago, but I'm so tense and miserable I don't know if it's him or me. I'm sure he loves me. I will not read the story again.
20 AUGUST
Filly is acting very strangely. I keep watching her-about Hugh I mean-I can't help myself. Sometimes I think I must be going mad.
25 AUGUST
Hardly slept at all. H. very busy again at the saleroom. Tried again to tell him about the story and couldn't.
10 SEPTEMBER
Very close and airless. H. stayed late again playing Scrabble. Kept willing Filly to go to bed but she wouldn't, even though I could hardly keep my eyes open-just played on and on until H. realised he'd missed the last tube. He said not to worry about making up the spare bed, he'd sleep on the couch in the library. I wanted to go downstairs with him but he said good-night on the landing in front of Filly.
By then I was too angry to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours until I gave up and went and stood at the window and looked at the moon. And I thought, I'll go down to the library and have it out with him.
Filly's door was locked and it was deathly quiet. Until I got to the landing outside the study and heard the noise. A squeaking, creaking sort of noise. Coming through the ceiling.
I tiptoed up the attic stairs and there they were, on Lettie's old bed, stark naked in the moonlight. He was sprawled along the mattress with his head hanging over the foot of the bed. She was riding him like a horse, straddling him with her hands on his shoulders, lashing his face with her hair. I couldn't move and I couldn't look away. Then her whole body arched and shuddered and she threw back her head and l
ooked straight at me.
(The rest of this page, and all the remaining pages in the diary, had been torn out.)
I read through the diary by torchlight, sitting on Anne's bed with the faded white tennis dress floating at the edge of my vision. I could not associate the mother I had known with the woman in the attic, and yet the final scene left me with a nightmarish sense of having witnessed my own conception. It was also disturbingly like one of the fantasies Alice and I had shared. I remained staring at the torn page until a very faint rustling somewhere overhead set the hair on the back of my neck bristling.
Downstairs in the comparative safety of the library, in an armchair beneath the four great windows, I read through it again. I had known, really, since I first read Miss Hamish's letter. Why else would Aunt Iris have turned so violently against Phyllis? (I would not think of her as 'my mother' any more.)
Phyllis had found the diary; had probably been reading it all along. 'Filly is acting very strangely: I saw what must have happened, set out as clearly as an endgame at chess, with Phyllis always one-no two moves ahead… Owe came true, indeed. Anne's record of the closing trap had gone with the torn-out pages. But why had Phyllis put the rest of the diary back in its hiding-place after-whatever she had done to-had done with Anne? It made no sense: after all, she had taken 'The Revenant'.
And there was something else… something that didn't fit. I took out Miss Hamish's letter to check the dates. Somewhere around the middle of September, Anne had written to say the engagement was 'all off'. But the 'dreadful set-to' between Phyllis and Iris hadn't happened for another fortnight or so. Anne clearly didn't tell her friend why she'd broken off with Hugh Montfort. Then Iris had changed her will and died within days of learning the truth. And Anne had last been seen alive in Mr Pitt's office on 26 October.
Miss Hamish. The diary did not once mention Miss Hamish.
How could this be? Unless she hadn't been nearly as close to Anne as she imagined… but no, Anne had left her the estate. For a few wild moments I toyed with the notion of Miss Hamish and Phyllis conspiring to murder Anne, but that was idiotic. Every detail in her letter fitted exactly with my own discoveries, and with Anne's diary, including Mr Pitt the solicitor. And the police would have investigated Abigail Hamish, as the sole beneficiary, very carefully indeed.
No: the only obvious answer was that Anne simply hadn't included the friendship-and presumably whole other dimensions of her life-in the diary. Odd, all the same. I leaned back in the armchair, staring up at the gallery where the veiled woman had appeared in my dream.
A woman in a dark green gown. Greensleeves.
The back of my neck prickled. Of course it had been a dream. I didn't-did I?-seriously believe in ghosts. Any more than I believed in spirit messages from beyond. I looked over at the stack of butcher's paper on the table. Something about the planchette had changed.
The squeak and scrape of the chair rose into a high, drawn-out note as I stood up. There was my question:
WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNE?
but the planchette had moved on. In faint, spidery letters, an answer had appeared:
Filly murdered me
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: None
Date: Wed, 11 August 1999 19:48:21 +0100 (BST)
…later I rang Mr Grierstone's clerk and asked her if the cleaners, or a security patrol had been in the house last night, and she said no, certainly not, no one else has keys, Miss Hamish was most insistent about that. She said the only way anyone could have got in was if I hadn't locked up properly last night, and I know I did.
I felt angry when I first saw the message. A defensive reaction, I suppose. Someone's playing games with me, I thought, but I'll show them. I wrote down another question, something no one else could answer, thinking, that'll prove you're not a ghost. It seemed perfectly logical at the time. But I knew really, even before I went out to phone, that it couldn't have been a cleaner or anyone like that. Who could possibly know that my mother was Filly to the family?
Maybe Mr Grierstone lives a double life, creeping out at night to frighten his clients. I wish I could believe that.
The only other possibility-the only one I want to think about-is that I wrote it myself, when I was sitting at the table yesterday afternoon, doodling with the planchette. But I KNOW I didn't do that. I can see myself sitting there yesterday, trying to convince myself that Mother couldn't have killed Anne, and the planchette doesn't move.
So either I'm turning into one of those 'missing time' people with alternate personalities, or Anne's ghost is telling me what I already know from her diary. I don't know which is more frightening. If I did write that message, what am I going to do next? What if it's inherited?-the condition, whatever it is? Am I going to turn into a murderer too?
I know what you'll say: I'm letting my worst fears run away with me. If only. It would actually be a relief, now, to believe what I've just written. Because I don't. I keep getting flashes-like the shadow of something truly monstrous creeping up behind you. Your mind keeps saying no, no, but your skin and your spine and your hair and the pit of your stomach know what's coming. In that house, anything is possible.
Alice I know we agreed to wait but I really need to talk to you right now. I've never felt more alone in my life. This morning in Family Records I looked you up, or tried to, I just couldn't help myself. You weren't born in England, so why have you always let me believe that you were? And that the accident happened here? After the shock of losing Staplefield, and finding out my whole childhood was a lie (I mean my mother's, but it feels like mine) and now this, you must understand why I need to hear your voice now, not 'very soon' but now.
I'll wait for an hour to see if you've read this before I ring the hospital…
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: None
Date: Wed, 11 August 1999 20:29:53 +0100 (BST)
I didn't tell you because I wanted it to be a surprise, but I've already left the hospital. I'm having a last lot of physiotherapy, in a clinic in St John's Wood, and I'll be with you in three more days, maybe sooner. There's nothing I want more in the world than to pick up the phone and pour out everything I feel. But we might regret it later. We mustn't have a conventional beginning, hi how are you, nice to speak to you at last. I think of you as my questing knight, facing his last ordeal.
And it is a terrible ordeal, but you mustn't lose hope yet, about your mother. I think you did go into some sort of trance and write that message, but it doesn't have to be either/or, either you wrote it or Anne did. I think Anne was trying to speak through you, only the fear that was preying on your mind took over the pencil. Houses, especially old houses, hold the impressions of people very strongly, and you're so attuned to her.
We'll be together very soon
Your invisible lover
Alice
As soon as I had read Alice's message, I took the lift down to the foyer and joined the crowds heading west along Euston Road towards the last of the sunset. The roar and stench of traffic was comforting; it stopped me from thinking. Just beyond Tottenham Court Road I found an entire street full of restaurants. I chose the noisiest, ate something vaguely Middle Eastern and drank a bottle of bad but expensive red, a thick metallic wine heavy with sediment. On the way back to the hotel I stopped at an off-licence and bought a bottle of whisky.
I woke at ten the following morning with a slow, thudding headache, which accompanied me down Kingsway to Somerset House on the Strand, where I intended to look up Iris's will, only to be told that wills were no longer kept there. I was sent back up to First Avenue House, a featureless modern building with airport-level security, in High Holborn. There were only two other people in the registry, and it took me all of three minutes to establish, from the probate registers, that Viola's estate had been valued at £12,989; Iris's-she had died on 6 October 1949-at £9,135.1 applied for copies
of the wills, was told there would be an hour's wait, and went back to the registers.
George Rupert Hatherley, my grandfather, had died intestate in Prince Alfred Hospital in Brighton on 13 August 1929, leaving effects to the value of £724.13.9. Violas husband, Alfred George Hatherley, had died not at Ferrier's Close but at 44 Ennismore Gardens Knightsbridge, on 7 December 1921, leaving just under six thousand pounds. So Viola had presumably inherited money, as well as Ferrier's Close, from her own family. Then I thought I might as well search forwards from 1949, just to make sure that Anne Hatherley hadn't died without Miss Hamish's knowing about it; I had got as far as 1990 before I remembered that as Anne's executor, Miss Hamish couldn't not have known. A coffee break was clearly overdue.
My copies arrived just as I was leaving. Viola had made her last will on 10 August 1938, leaving everything to Iris with the proviso that if Iris should die before the will was proven, the estate should be divided equally between 'my granddaughters Anne Victoria and Phyllis May Hatherley, both of Ferrier's Close Hampstead in the County of London'. Her executor was 'Edward Nichol Pitt of 18 Whetstone Park Solicitor'. Iris's last will, signed on 4 October 1949, two days before she died, was even simpler. It left everything to 'my dear niece Anne Victoria Hatherley'. Pitt the Elder was again the executor; Phyllis wasn't even mentioned.
Surrounded by people shouting into mobiles through the clatter of cups and the hiss and roar of the coffee machine, while the traffic outside negotiated High Holborn in a series of kamikaze rushes, I felt almost certain I didn't believe in spirit messages. Of course I had written those words myself. If only I could remember writing them, I wouldn't have to worry any more about alternate personalities, or missing time. Or ghosts. I picked up my pen and sat with the tip resting lightly on a blank page of my notebook, trying to will myself into recalling the moment. But the memory would not come, and instead I found myself thinking about Alice.
