Samain

by Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  The woman was silenced, temporarily. Disbelief crossed her features before a glimmer of fanatic speculation began to light her eyes, making Henry regret that he had given her something powerful and authentic to garble with all her other lunacies.

  By a tactic combining courtesy with ruthlessness, Roger managed to edge her out of the way as he addressed Henry. ‘Yes. You see, it was your aunt who had been telling me about it, that day. Sometimes I met her when I was out with the dogs and we’d have a walk together. I enjoyed those walks very much, she was a mine of information — I understand you never knew her?’

  ‘No,’ Henry said, for what seemed the seven-hundredth time. His aunt had not been a woman who mixed very much socially — although it could scarcely have been for lack of opportunity; he had had so many invitations he sometimes woke at night in a panic, wondering how he was going to return all the hospitality he accepted. But it was difficult to find anyone who had not known his aunt; naturally enough, as she had spent her life in the village.

  ‘... she told me how they lit fires to warm the sun in the earth during his winter sleep; and there was always the fear he might not return in the spring. She had a way of making things sound personal to her, as if they’d happened only yesterday. You obviously share her interests.’

  ‘Yes —’

  ‘You’d have had such a lot to talk about. You must regret never having known her.’

  Henry did, he felt for her the same protectiveness he felt for the house, and a dreadful shame that he had scarcely been aware of her existence, never even attended her funeral.

  Roger said, ‘I read her little book. I found the style touching, exactly the manner of her way of speaking to one, actually.’

  The repulsive Rowena could remain neither silent nor still. She raked about in a garbage-like bag dangling from her arm, produced a pair of vulgar spectacles, put them on and peered at Henry. ‘I know,’ she said, with a shriek of recognition, ‘you’re the guy whose aunt was a witch —’

  From across the room Lydia was approaching. She was another woman who led a rather retired life and yet seemed to know everyone. On this occasion the hosts were friends of hers and she had been pleased to have Henry as escort, travel in his car, dressed in her best crêpe-de-Chine and eager to introduce him to people.

  The subject of his aunt’s odd reputation had not arisen between them; she might react with distress, possibly she would be amused — or take Constable Crowther’s sensible attitude. Henry had no way of knowing, and he did not mean to have the knowledge forced on him through the agency of the appalling female who at that moment was gripping his arm with her green-fingernailed hand and demanding to know, ‘Are there emanations? In the house? There must be — she’d be bound to have immense occult presence. I’ll come and test the atmosphere. When can I come? I’d be bound to sense something.’

  Lydia had almost reached them, she paused for a moment to say a word to a couple standing nearby. Henry shook his arm free as Rowena, with a glance in Lydia’s direction, shrilled on, ‘I’m bound to sense something — oh, there’s that peculiar little Quasimodo woman — because your mind is obviously closed and I have such insight. What an opportunity. When shall I come? What do you say?’

  ‘Piss off,’ Henry answered. He’d been wanting to say it ever since she opened her mouth.

  *

  Some days later, in his flat, sorting through an overload of books to take some to the house, Henry came across one on the cinema. He could not remember buying it and, glancing at the flyleaf, saw it belonged to a friend. He put it aside, making a mental note to return it. On an afterthought, he picked it up again, flicked through the pages and in a section devoted to horror films found a reference to Augustus Wynter.

  The book was largely photographs, the text mercifully brief; even so, Henry thought, he must have been drunk when he borrowed it. He could never have read it, the style was so imbecilic he could scarcely get through one paragraph without feeling ill.

  ... King of the creepies ... Maker of mind-bending masterpieces that thrilled and terrorised egg-head critics and common man alike ... Hoist by his own petrified petard when tragedy overtook during the shooting of ‘The Marching Stones’, leaving this gruesome gem uncompleted ...

  There was a still from the film, an interior shot of an immense hall and staircase. The light had an eerie quality, dissolving as a whisper of mist in a doorway. There were figures, hooded and cloaked and — with the exception of one — masked. The masks, half glimpsed within the shadow of each hood, had the rigidity of stone, their blind, unmoving chill all the more menacing in contrast to the sweeping, sensuous folds of the cloaks. In the formality of their postures each figure had its own dramatic impact, yet all merged together in a fluent composition where movement and stillness, mass and weightlessness were juxtaposed to hallucinatory effect.

  The light glanced on the one unmasked face, a face that wrenched at Henry’s mind and sent it back, helter-skelter, over twenty years to stuffy, smoke-filled cinemas where he had gone to be frightened out of his wits — and to worship.

  Her. Jessica Something ...

  He could not remember her name and had to look for it beneath the photograph. Jessica Rayle. Everyone had known it then, when she had been a great star, a fantasy film creature, her poised, elfin frame larger than life, not flesh and blood at all but sustenance for unnumbered callow and erotic daydreams. Henry remembered those well enough, and winced at the recollection of them.

  We were very unsophisticated then, he thought. We didn’t know we were being manipulated, any more than we suspected they were, to provide us with our fantasies.

  A great star, perhaps on the threshold of becoming a great actress; her brilliance had shone for such a short while — four years, at most — before guttering out in the sordid publicity of her death. Henry thought about that, recalling the mixture of fascination and obloquy with which the press had picked over the details which, in regard to the event itself, were few and simple: she had taken an overdose of barbiturates after drinking too much. There had been no way of telling if her intention had been suicide; the verdict was misadventure.

  The official verdict. Her public rendered its own. Having adored her as the embodiment of the helpless, fairytale creature drawn to the edge of doom, they were shocked when she succumbed to her own myth. And behind the glamorous, fated screen presence lay a confused and striving woman, addicted to drugs, whose private life was in disarray; she had let everyone down, she was mortal, and she proved it by dying. Her judgement was to be forgotten.

  The more charitable whispers, at the time, hinted that the Svengali-like influence of the man who had discovered and fostered her talent had also destroyed it. Without him, it was said, she was nothing. With him, she was forced beyond her capabilities, becoming more than herself to feed his esteem, less than herself in human terms. (It was rumoured that once, in referring to her, he had said, ‘I made a monster.’) Fame and its attendant tensions accumulated, the screen image grew even more exaggerated until finally it shattered; but the woman, perhaps, had died long before.

  She had not survived Augustus Wynter’s films; but then, they had not survived her — there had been none after her death, of that Henry was convinced. Applying his mind, he traced another shred of memory: the disappearance of the child — someone related to Augustus Wynter — which had occurred about the same time as the star’s death.

  These few tantalising scraps were all Henry could recover of the story. He was intrigued by the thought of the legendary man who was his neighbour, who was never seen and — in Henry’s experience so far — never spoken of. Who had shut himself up with his tragic memories in the grotesque house — itself almost completely hidden from sight by the crazy rise and fall of the ground and the dense, sheltering trees.

  4

  ‘You look like a yard of old tat.’

  ‘I feel it. So do you.’

  ‘At least it means he won’t recognise us again.’

&n
bsp; ‘I don’t see why we have to do it this way.’

  ‘Because I’m not climbing through any more damn windows.’

  ‘And I don’t see why —’

  ‘You never do.’

  ‘— It has to be this weekend.’

  ‘We have to take advantage of opportunities. He’s alone. All the other times he’s had a woman in tow. And he’s been doing alterations in the house, shifting things around. Something might have ... turned up. You never know.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. About the women. He’s so attractive. Well-dressed. Suave. Not a bit like a policeman.’

  ‘Suave ... They’re not forever stamping around in size tens, licking a pencil and saying “Evening all”. You never could grasp the fact that people aren’t instantly recognisable by their role in life. That’s probably one of the things that blighted your career. Come on, it’s time. You know what to do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. We’ve rehearsed it enough.’

  ‘All right. But we’ll run through it again, just to make sure.

  His heart was tired, his mind too often, too densely crowded with the havoc of illusions; perhaps all that could be said to be alive in him was his sense of drama.

  The lighting was right, the costumes, the make-up, even the walk — the determined, low-heeled stamp of the characters they had assumed. Below him, they moved across the vast hall; and pausing, the taller of the two glanced up, sensing his presence high in the clawing shadows, and moved her hand in a slight, ironic gesture.

  *

  Henry worked all day in the house then made himself a meal. As he ate it he contemplated with pleasure the three days ahead: he had taken two days’ leave and tacked them on to his weekend. He did that whenever he could; this was home now. His work had always filled his life, where he lived was comparatively unimportant; his austerely practical bachelor flat in a northern town was simply somewhere where he paused for rest, if it expressed anything of his personality, it was the cold efficiency of his workaday self. But this house was a place sheltered and sheltering, it asked for the wholeness of himself.

  Solitary by nature, he kept his own company very well, but when the opportunity occurred to bring someone along he never turned it down. It was a risk, women were unaccountable creatures; there had been misunderstandings and emotional disasters; there had also been the pleasure of affection freely given and taken, and audaciously satisfying nights in the stately feather bed.

  When he finished his meal he washed up and went into the garden with the intention of enjoying the evening by pottering about; although effort, more than pottering, was required to deal with the lushness of plants and weeds that contended for space in the fullness of their growth.

  He had Wanda for company. Lydia had gone to the county town to change her library books, take tea with a friend and indulge in a rare visit to the cinema, a treat she looked forward to with the excitement of a girl. ‘Let me have Wanda,’ Henry asked. ‘She’ll be in the house by herself and I’ll be here by myself. We might as well have each other to talk to.’ So Lydia left Wanda, and Wanda’s dinner, with him, and dressed in her best blue linen suit hurried off to catch the bus.

  Twilight came by stealth, the birds sang their way into sleep, the still air was sweet with the scent of laden honeysuckle that climbed the wall. Henry abandoned any pretence of work and began to play with Wanda. He had bought a ball for her which he kept on a certain stone in the garden. She soon learnt that it was always there, that it was hers, and went to fetch it when she wanted a game.

  He hid the ball from her, clutching it to his chest and rolling over on the grass while she leapt about him, trying to burrow her nose in his hands. He was lying on his back, laughing at her as she sprawled across him, her small body almost weightless, when suddenly she sprang up and stood tensely, her ears pricked.

  ‘Good evening,’ an unknown voice said in a tone of command.

  Henry found himself staring at a pair of sensible shoes and even more sensible stockings. He had a wild thought that if the woman came any closer he would no doubt be able to see, beneath the hem of her skirt, those sensible, passionless knickers that terminate just above the knee by means of quite vicious elastic.

  He scrambled up, automatically brushing away the grass from his tee shirt and slacks. ‘Er — good evening.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Enderby-Smythe. You’re Inspector Beaumont. I’m here on behalf of the Village Institute. We are arranging our winter programme and I have been asked to approach you to see if you would be willing to give a talk on a policeman’s life.’

  She was a large woman with a forceful voice. Almost, she was larger than life; but that, Henry thought, was probably the contrast between her unyielding bulk and the cobweb texture of the dusk. She wore a severe hat, spectacles, and carried a large, business-like handbag from which she produced a notebook and pencil. She was representative of a type, met at every turn in the country, who sat on committees, stood no nonsense, bottled jam and won prizes for flower arranging; the kind of woman who was a walking caricature of herself and always made Henry want to laugh.

  ‘Er’ he began, because she also had a demolishing effect.

  ‘Good. As you appear not to be immediately occupied we could possibly discuss details and dates.’ She brandished her pencil and peered at her notebook. ‘The light is failing,’ she said in a tone of accusation that made Henry feel personally responsible.

  ‘Er — yes, I’m afraid it is. But you see —’

  ‘You will be required to speak for thirty minutes. Then there will be a fifteen-minute question and answer session ‘ As she spoke she strode towards the house and he found himself accompanying her as a leaf in the wake of a gale. ‘Our meetings begin at seven-thirty. Sharp.’ She came to a full stop at the kitchen steps and made a commanding gesture with the notebook, indicating he should precede her and switch on the light.

  He did this, impelled by a desire to settle the matter and get rid of her; but immediately she stepped into the kitchen a curious change came over her. She paused and swayed, dipping her head, putting her hand up to her face, murmuring, ‘Oh ...’ in a faint, muffled voice.

  ‘Are you ill?’ Henry went to her quickly, almost automatically pushing a chair beneath her. She sank into it, her head bowed. The glimpse he had had of her face when he switched on the light surprised him: her skin had a grubby kind of greyness, not at all the healthy, high-coloured complexion he had expected.

  She murmured, ‘So stupid ... One of my dizzy spells ... I do apologise.’

  ‘Some brandy?’

  ‘No ... No, thank you. A glass of water, if you would be so ...’

  Pathetic in the wreck of her dignity, she sat huddled, her handbag slipping from her lap, her hand blindly reaching out for the glass he offered. At that moment there was a wild knocking on the front door.

  ‘What the — ?’ Henry looked towards the hall, back to the woman in the chair. The knocking was loud and unrelenting. ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Immediately he wrenched open the front door the small woman who stood on the step began speaking with a fluttering urgency, making beseeching movements with her hands. ‘My car — would you help? A man stepped in front of me — I skidded — He seems to be lying — He seems —’

  ‘Where?’

  She flung out her right arm in an unhelpful, sweeping motion; a bracelet rattled at her wrist, fussily accompanying the movement. ‘That little wood — by the corner. I just — and the first house I came to —’

  ‘Just a moment’ Henry turned, but as he took one stride across the wide hall he saw that Mrs Enderby-Smythe had come to the door of the kitchen, her bulk silhouetted against the rectangle of light. The small woman’s breathy voice pursued him; Mrs Enderby-Smyth’s voice was faint, but firm. ‘I heard. You go. I’ll just sit here, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Certainly. I don’t think I’ll be long.’

&nbs
p; He had to run to catch up with the small woman who was already scuttling down the path. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Soconfusing. I came round the corner. He just stepped in front of me — I must have skidded, putting on my brakes, right into the trees. And he was lying there ...’

  They were walking quickly along the rough, unlit road, past the market garden. He looked down at her. What he could see of her in the twilight was that she was tweedy, bespectacled, hatted and low-heeled; an ineffectual version of the woman who sat recovering from her dizzy spell in his kitchen. It’s my night for them, he thought.

  ‘Did you touch him?’

  ‘Goodness, no,’ she squeaked. ‘I was too confused — shock. I could only think — get help. My nerves are not good.’

  Shehad to have nerves, he groaned inwardly. She talked nonstop, moving her hands distractedly, her voice competing with the clatter of her bracelet. It occurred to him how oddly out of character the bracelet was; tweedy women did not normally go in for such frivolities.

  When at last they reached the coppice she plunged between the trees, turned right, then left, then halted. ‘Oh, dear ... I seem to have lost my bearings.’ She began to turn round and round like a top.

  ‘I’m not surprised. Stand still a moment. Think. Now —’

  She gave a little cry, ‘This way, I’m sure —’

  If he tried to keep pace beside her he kept walking into trees; he had to follow, cursing the lack of a torch. When she suddenly pulled up short he almost flattened her. ‘It couldn’t behere. You couldn’t get a car in the middle of this —’

  ‘No. No, I’m wrong. Oh, dear, it’s so muddling. To theleft, perhaps ...’

  ‘Wait —’ he began, but she had darted off again.

  When he did catch up with her and put a hand on her arm to restrain her, she was quite obviously threshing about with no idea of where to go.