‘She did, yes, it’s true. I’m afraid we went after her at a distance, like a huddle of sheep. We watched her cross the hall and begin to go up the stairs — then Cass ran after her.’
Cass twisted round to look down at Henry. ‘I stayed a couple of steps behind her. She went straight there, without hesitating. And we were standing in the room, in the moonlight, and I said to her: “How do you know?” and she shrugged and answered softly: “I don’t know how.” Then she carefully took off her specs and wrapped her cloak round her and curled up on the bed. I think she fell asleep straight away. I stood watching her, she scarcely seemed to breath ... So after a while I just came away. Henry, the last time I ever saw Helen she was in that room. I was going back to school, I went to say goodbye to her, she was playing there.’
‘Yes, I remember. I was with you,’ Evelyn said.
‘So you were.’
‘The morning of the day she disappeared,’ Mandy said. ‘I saw her in that room.’
Is she still there? Henry wondered. Or have they imagined her? Once he had thought Marchstearn specialised in vanishing women; was she to be another?
Cass jumped up. ‘Shall I get her? Wake her up. Tell her we want to talk to her.’
‘No,’ Evelyn said. ‘Leave her, let her sleep. We have to decide what to do.’
‘What can we do?’
‘There must be something.’
The three women looked at Henry. He looked back steadily. ‘Wynter’s a rich man, isn’t he? Who gets his money when he dies?’
There was a pause before Cass said coldly, ‘Spoken like a gentleman.’
Evelyn stirred. ‘No, it’s a practical view. We do, the three of us.’
‘Yes,’ Henry said politely.
‘That is,’ she went on, ‘that is, unless Helen turns up. In that case it would all go to her.’
‘You’ve thought of that,’ Henry said.
‘No —’ Cass was astonished.
‘Oh, yes we have,’ Mandy said cynically. ‘We all have. No one’ssaid it, that’s all.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Cass said, fidgeting angrily round the room. ‘It might be the thought uppermost in your mind but it hadn’t occurred to me.’
‘It bloody soon would if she was Helen and none of us got a penny.’
‘Don’t be vulgar.’
‘When you’re living comfortably on your share you won’t find itvulgar.’
Cass had few defences, she could exchange insults with the restrained skill of long practice but still she was no match for the implacable woman on the chaise-longue — the weakness was in herself. Henry believed that her astonishment was genuine, that until that moment she had given no thought to the practicalities of the situation; and watching her as she prowled about, fascinated by the expressiveness of her gainly body, he saw in the lift of her shoulders, and turn of her head, how her tension was poised between defiance and apology. In an intimate relationship pretences wore threadbare and he had long ago seen through hers; he knew her refined tastes, her disinclination to provide for herself, her inability to make anything in her life useful or secure; he knew what kept her in this awful place, in the company of a woman she detested. She was waiting for her share of the old man’s fortune. Given the romantic incompetence of her nature, it was fair enough, he would never judge her and he said nothing, saving her pride. But sheknew that he knew, and avoided his gaze, as always escaping from the discomfort of too much reality.
‘Oh, please yourself what you do. I’m going to see to Cesar.’
‘That’s it, slide off when the going gets rough. As usual,’ Mandy said, resigned.
‘I haven’t mucked him out yet,’ Cass answered, as if enormous events hung upon the robust-sounding activity.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Henry said, getting up.
‘Oh — will you?’ She looked at him, surprised, then away again, shrugging. ‘Oh, if you want.’
‘I’d like to see where this performance took place last night.’
‘All right.’
Evelyn sat immersed in thought, murmuring, ‘I’ll be here for a while but I must get back for lunch. George will be home, he’s been away since yesterday, thank goodness. I don’t know what he’s going to say ...’
‘I do,’ Cass muttered, shutting the door. ‘He’ll say: “Really old girl, there’s not going to be any trouble, is there? Think of my position.’’ He’s like a broody hen with his blasted position.’
She made to turn to the left. Henry said, ‘Justa minute,’ and went the other way, along the passage and into the hall.
It was grotesque, overdramatic, with the starkness of a dismantled stage set; it was the place he had seen in the still fromThe Marching Stones.
... but for all its hollowness the weight of stone was oppressive, doors stood ajar on deadened cavities of shadow, the great entrance was shuttered, the staircase ascending to darkness; as he looked about his gaze was drawn on everywhere, anywhere, by angles and turns and openings while his mind numbingly retreated from limitless possibilities of rooms and passages. In his disorientated state he felt a presence brood, chill as the dead lying captive in tombs; it seemed a face floated high up in the gallery, smudged briefly on the gloom, the dark glitter of ancient eyes for a moment seeking his.
He blinked. Cass said quietly, ‘The light plays tricks in here.’
‘Did I see someone?’
‘No. Augustus wouldn’t come out.’
‘The woman?’
‘No.’ She was looking in the direction of his gaze and now pointed to the left, where an archway opened away from the gallery. ‘The Dragon room’s that way.’
‘Come on.’ He turned and went thankfully with her out into the morning air, it was dank enough but anything was preferable to that lifeless place.
She stood still, sullen but determined. ‘Henry, it’s true I’ll get a third of Augustus’s money. I suppose you think —’
‘Never mind about that, darling. Show me what you were all doing last night, and where. And tell me the Six’ll.’
She muttered, attached to the disgruntlement of excusing herself to him, perhaps the realisation that she had no need to do so hurt her a little. After a while she made her peace with herself and did as he asked, reciting the spell ...by stick by stone I’ll bring you home, by stone by ley you’ll find the way ... It was short, he made her recite it again. ‘Where does it come from?’ he asked.
‘Augustus turned it up somewhere, I suppose. He has an enormous collection of old books, manuscripts; the library here is huge. Does it matter?’
‘Not really. Stones, flashes, trees ... they’re all sighting points for the leys, did you know?’ An impossible notion careered wildly in and out of his mind as he spoke. ‘No.’
They went into a high-walled stable yard; over the half door of his loose box Cesar swung his stately head, snickering a welcome through velvet nostrils. Henry looked about. There were numerous buildings, grimy and dilapidated, a coach-house converted to a garage, a door opening onto a neat little room. ‘Is that the tack room?’
Cass said yes and showed him. Everything was orderly, cared-for: the deep gloss of polished leather, the shine of steel, blankets brushed and folded; there was warmth from a stove, on some kind of settle a heap of black garments.
Cesar, cheated of their company, began to kick ponderously at his door. ‘He can’t stand beingignored,’ Cass said and went away. Henry picked up the cloaks from the settle, beneath them the masks huddled. Papier maché modelled in crusty grey lumps and crags, the only attempts at any delineation of human features were in the slits for the eyes. Lying there in the snug, workaday room they were tawdry and repellent; in certain lights, on certain occasions, they would be terrifying.
Cass was scratching Cesar’s long face and talking affectionate nonsense to him; he turned to Henry and blew hay-scented breath over him in a friendly fashion. ‘Back soon to do your beddies, horse,’ Cass promised him.
They walked away, bet
ween bushes so overgrown the branches met and twined overhead. Where the ground opened there was a sheer drop, steps, cut from the rock, winding vertiginously down, and straight ahead the breath-catching distance of Mark Hill with the fort humped against the sky-line guarding the long, irregular double line of monoliths. Henry looked down and saw, plunged beneath him, a rough clearing, trees, another drop to the river. Here — he knew but did not say it — Cass’s father had fallen to his death; it was scarcely surprising, cold sober and in daylight it was a dangerous place.
‘I’ll go first,’ he said and, as they began to descend the steps where there was nothing to hold to, only the rock slippery yet coarse against the flat of his hand — ‘Christ, you never got the old boy up and down this.’
‘No, we used the other way last night — over to the right, a path through the trees. It’s longer; safe, though.’
‘Where did she get her cloak?’
‘She doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember anythingbefore she was in the circle — and she’s none too clear about that.’
‘No, I mean, wherecould she have got it? There are some in the tack room. Did you put them there beforehand?’
‘Yes, I did. We talked about that — Evelyn wasn’t sure I had, you see, so she’d put two there, as well. And honestly, Henry, the house is oneentire dressing-up basket, you could fit yourself out for any damn thing,’ she mumbled, negotiating the last few tricky steps, jumping down to stand beside him.
At the foot of the drop hazardous looking boulders were strewn; the clearing, spreading away from them, was not very large, the house was lost to sight. Henry weighed up the geography: the woman could have taken a cloak from the tack room and come down by way of the right-hand path, she would scarcely have attempted the staircase without a light of some kind, and no matter how immersed they were in their antics someone would have noticed that.
‘Where did she come from?’
‘Over there, I can’t be sure because it was dark —’
Cass led him to where the trees spread on all sides, rich with the leaf-mould of countless autumns, dense with the murmuring stillness, the peculiarly half-felt enchantment of all gatherings of trees.
‘Where does this bit lead?’
‘Only the river, it sort of curves round there.’
So she would have had to come by the right-hand path, working round through the trees under cover of darkness, waiting until the moment arrived ...
‘Show me what you did,’ he said
She showed him, abbreviating the ceremony, but still it took some time. In the clearing, crouching down, she gave a low cry of astonishment. ‘Henry, it’s gone — the doll, the figurine. We buried it here. Look.’
He looked at the small grave, the scoop of earth empty as the hollowed palm of an open hand, and as Cass muttered her bewilderment he thought how they put her in there, the simulacrum of the lost girl, her dismembered limbs representing the mysterious disorder of her going, her wanderings. Put her into the earth for the earth to hold her, covered her softly and left her to wait for the single revelatory moment when the new year sheered away from the old —
With alarming unexpectedness he felt the stirring of hair on the back of his neck, the prickled change in the texture of his skin. He backed away, looking up at the leering rim of rock, the hidden path in the trees, the stairway.
‘What is it?’ Cass asked.
‘There’s somebody here.’ He was impatient with himself for allowing so much contrivance to play on his imagination. Here there could be no authentic magic, thefrisson (he had to admit it had occurred) was easily accounted for. Someone undoubtedly had been there, just for a moment had looked at him and gone away; but from which direction, and for what purpose, he could not tell, and with so much cover it was impossible to find out.
‘Go on,’ he said to Cass, and she went on, recreating the movements and words of the previous night. When she had finished they sat on a stone and smoked cigarettes. She speculated in a random way about the stranger and he tried to stop the words of the spell going on and on in his head and wondered why the clocks had stopped in his house. Whyhis?
Cass jumped up. ‘I must see to my horse, he hasn’t even had a drink.’
They went the longer way, up the path through the trees. Henry imagined them processing absurdly down it in the night, tricked out for an undertaking that variously intrigued, baffled, obsessed them.
As they neared the end of the path Mandy approached them. Indoors, she had at least taken on the tone of her surroundings, in the grey wash of the morning her busily overdressed little body was as shrill as a whistle; she wore the exaggerated platform soles of high fashion and a nylon scarf over her bouffant hair-do to protect it from the damp. She made Henry think of models who posed in furs against a background of dustbins.
‘Sarah Bernhardt, I presume,’ Cass murmured.
‘Isn’t she with you — that woman, that Leonora?’ Mandy said, peering.
‘Is she up?’ Cass countered.
‘Of course she’s up. Wandered into the lounge while I was having a quiet fag. She wanted something to eat so I said I’d make her something. While I was doing it she said she’d like a breath of air and came out to say hallo to you.’
‘To me, that’s nice. We haven’t seen her.’ Cass stopped and looked at Henry. ‘Maybe that’s who it was, when you felt someone there — and she went away because you were with me. Perhaps she’sshy.’ She turned to Mandy, putting on her gangster drawl, ‘Say, did ya get her to talk ...’
‘Talk, she doesn’t bloody stop, it’s like a tap running. And all about nothing. Oh, well, if you see her, tell her to come in. Evelyn’s out looking for her, too.’
She tottered off, the uneven ground hazardous to her platform soles. She went by way of the stable yard and they followed a few paces behind, Cass calling, ‘What about something to eat for me?’
‘Sod you, dearie,’ came the equable return call. ‘And fit a silencer on that great daft animal —’ gesturing dramatically to Cesar who was kicking his door at the sight of human beings.
Henry went with Cass into the stable; at the end of a row of stalls another half door opened on to Cesar’s loose box. Once there would have been riding horses and carriage horses, the busy routine of caring for them; now in an echoing emptiness junk accumulated and cobwebs strung. There were small areas of tidiness, though, where Cass had organised herself. She took out brush and pitch-fork and shovel. ‘Can I help?’ Henry asked. She said he could take Cesar for a drink and opened the loose box door.
‘How do I hold him?’ Henry said, faintly, aghast at the sight of the great horse pacing towards him.
‘His mane, if you want. He knows the way,’ Cass said, and Henry discovered that taking Cesar for a drink meant walking with him out through the stable, along the yard to the trough.
Cass opened the outer loose-box door and trundled about with a wheelbarrow; inside, she forked and shovelled, sorting out the soiled straw. Henry’s glimpses of her efficiently at work were accompanied by the relishing slurps and sucks of Cesar at the trough. When the horse had finished he raised his head, dashing water everywhere, and looked about with an interested gleam in his eye. ‘What do I do now?’ Henry yelled.
Cass appeared briefly. ‘Let him have a little look around, he likes that. But don’t let him wander out, you’d be surprised how hard he can be to find.’
They perambulated the yard. The wide entrance gave a view of tortured paths disappearing into the jungle of bushes and trees, the house, a little way off, rearing its crazed ugliness against the November sky. Henry grew nervous near the entrance and, resorting to shoves and a great deal of leaning, guided Cesar back in the direction of his loose box.
Evelyn tramped up, persevering. ‘I haven’t seen her. Perhaps she’s gone back to the house. Odd creature. Mandy says she’s a positive chatterbox. You like horses?’
‘I don’t know many,’ Henry said.
‘No, I don’t,’ she answered,
unsmiling, patting Cesar with a ration of goodwill. Henry remembered she had no sense of humour, and no children. Her attitude to Cass was one of business-like loyalty; she would find it difficult to express affection, she was not built for it and possibly considered it unseemly.
She spoke to Cass: ‘I must go, I haven’t seen to the shopping, and there’s lunch ... And George ... Do you mind if I take your car?’
‘Let me drive you,’ Henry offered.
She declined with firmness and after a few more words went away with a very faint suggestion of guilty relief at leaving behind the disorder and mystery that had for so long, so persistently menaced her becalmed existence. Henry wondered if she had refused his offer because she did not want George — or the neighbours — to see her in unlikely company, in a strange car, and be obliged to give an account of herself. Her doings would be so predictable any deviation would cause comment.
‘Poor old Ev, she does find us all a trial,’ Cass said. ‘I’ve finished in here, he can come in now.’
After she had shut Cesar in they walked back towards the house. Henry said, ‘People must know of her connection with Wynter, it’s not the sort of thing you can keep quiet in a place so small as this.’
‘Evelyn can — just by being Evelyn. She cansmother gossip ... in the ordinary way of things. And she is so genuinely respectable she can make things respectable by association. Her good name is very dear to her, truly, she’d suffer if wild stories —’
They were walking between the laurels, so old and overgrown on their twisted black stems the leaves crowded overhead, screening the light. In the gloom of this dark green tunnel Henry saw Cass’s expression change suddenly as she caught her breath on a triumphant whispered, ‘There —’ and looking ahead he saw that a figure was approaching slowly, with a wandering step.
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