by Peter James
‘We haven’t got it,’ said the houseman. ‘We’ve only got two pints. We’re trying to get some more.’
‘Anaesthetic will kill her.’
‘So will the baby.’
‘Can we have a word in private?’
She watched from above as the obstetric registrar and the houseman went into the corridor and closed the door behind them. ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to save both of them,’ the registrar said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘We have to make a decision. Between them.’
‘The mother or the baby?’
‘Yes.’
The houseman shook his head. ‘At what point?’
‘Now. If you want that woman to live, we’ve got to terminate the baby.’
‘We can’t do that.’
‘If we deliver, the mother’s got an eighty per cent chance of dying. You want that on your conscience?’
‘Which do you want?’
Their eyes met and each knew what the other was thinking. She’s probably too far gone already. Let her go. Let her go and save the baby. Except they knew that they were not equipped to make that decision.
‘Get the duty anaesthetist,’ the registrar said.
The baby’s bottom came out first in a film of membrane and blood. The houseman clamped the cord and the midwife sucked out the baby’s mouth.
‘Seems healthy and normal,’ said the obstetric registrar. ‘Doesn’t appear to have been affected by the mother’s blood loss. Two surface cuts to be sutured from the stab wounds.’ He pointed to the gashes in the left side of the baby’s stomach and in its right thigh, then looked down inside the massive incision in the mother’s stomach. ‘More clamps, Swab.’
She became aware that the bleeding was stopping, and what was there was dark blue. Her body was starting to palpitate and her face changed colour, to puce then to deep purple. The surgeon looked at the anaesthetist, who shrugged. The purple was fading, turning to slate grey, the pupils of her eyes dilating widely.
‘More blood. Another pint.’
It was too late.
The people below her in their green gowns and cotton masks stared at the level in the glass bottle, watching it sink down into the red rubber tubing that ran to her vein. The blood pressure needle fell against its rest and flickered, twice. It was almost as if the people in the room could feel her life slip out of her.
Free, she thought. Free now. No more pain. Darkness closed in, soft warm darkness like a summer evening. It became a long dark tunnel with a tiny pinprick of light at the end. The light drew her, getting slowly brighter, warmer, deep golden, filling her with an intense sensation of joy, of welcome. She reached out her arms, the light blinding her now, smiling, laughing like a child. Then there was a draught of cold air and she felt herself slipping back, felt something pulling her back down.
No. Please. Let me go.
A dark icy tornado swirled, spun her around, drew her hurtling down like an express elevator. Please, no. She was plummeting. The light above her shrank into a tiny spot, then was gone.
Fear rose up through her, froze around her, encasing her, blurring her mind. Light began to seep into her eyes, harsh blurred light, cold, hostile, filled with hazy green shapes, strange sounds. She felt a prick in her stomach, then another. She screamed in terror.
‘There, there! It’s all right! It’s all right!’
Faces. Eyes behind masks.
‘There, there! It’s all right!’
Someone held a needle in the air. A man took it. Brought it down. There was a fierce stabbing pain in her groin and she screamed out again.
‘It’s all right! It’s all right!’
The faces dissolved. They became one face. Eyes behind thick lenses. One face bathed in dim red light, motionless, unblinking, studying her. Ernest Gibbon.
It was as if she were underwater, miles underwater and the weight was pressing down on her. She tried to move, but her body was leaden. Dead. She was dead. He knew that she might die and she had.
He continued studying her motionlessly. She looked at him, the person that could make her undead, somehow. He knew the key, knew how to make her live again; knew the command, the nod, the twitch, the words that would bring her back, bring her out. He stayed silent.
She wondered what the time was. Dark, it seemed so dark. Her brain was fuzzed and she could not remember when she had come, how long she had been here. She wished he would speak, or smile, or nod.
It was a full minute before she realised that he was the one who was dead.
Chapter Thirty-two
Charley sat on the pew, at Viola Letters’s funeral, sandwiched between Hugh and Zoe. Vic and his wife sat further along in the same row. Several other faces in the church looked familiar as well, from the cricket match, from shopping in Elmwood village.
She stared at the printed words of the funeral service and fought back a yawn. She’d had only two hours’ sleep. Her dress, a navy two-piece she had bought last year was tight; she hoped it was sombre enough.
The particles in our bodies have electro-magnetic charges. When our corpses break down, either through cremation or burial, it all goes back into the earth and one way, or another, gets recycled. Each particle keeps its memory, like a tiny piece of videotape.
Hugh’s words echoed in her mind.
Ernest Gibbon’s face stared back. Motionless. Ashen.
She looked at the oak coffin with its brass handles and the flowers on top, wondering. Wondering if there was a connection between what had disturbed Viola Letters in the photograph and her death.
Ridiculous. Just an accident.
For a moment she was confused, thought maybe it was Ernest Gibbon in the coffin on the trestle in front of the altar, in the small church with its frescoes on the wall dating back to Norman times, someone had told her.
They were singing ‘Jerusalem’. Charley held the hymn book and sang the words quietly. It was her favourite hymn; normally she found it rousing, but today it was as if they were playing it in another room.
The regression had started just after one p.m., and should have lasted two or three hours. It had been ten p.m. when she had come round, out of her trance, and seen Ernest Gibbon sitting there, dead. She had touched him and whimpered in fear, in the knowledge that she had been in a trance for an hour, maybe two, three, or even more, while he had sat there, dead. She had wondered if she was fully out of her trance and was still scared she had not been brought properly out.
She had gone downstairs and knocked on the door of his mother’s room. There had been no answer and she had gone inside, and seen an elderly frail woman in bed, eyes glued to the television.
‘Mrs Gibbon,’ she had said, ‘we need to call an ambulance.’
‘He’s with a patient. He must not be disturbed,’ she had replied, not turning her head. ‘Nothing must disturb him.’
‘It’s an emergency.’
‘He is not allowed to be disturbed. It is too dangerous.’
The old woman was like her adoptive mother in the earlier stages of the disease; Charley knew the signs. She had gone downstairs, found a phone in the sitting room and called the ambulance. Then she had let Ben out of the car and was amazed he hadn’t made a mess.
The ambulancemen had been disgruntled when they’d arrived. Ernest Gibbon had been dead for at least six hours and she should have called a doctor to issue a death certificate. Not them.
Gibbon’s mother had come out of the room, one shrivelled breast hanging out of her nightdress, and told them her son was with a patient and must not be disturbed.
When Charley had tried to explain to the ambulancemen that she had been in a hypnotic trance in a room with a dead man, they had thought she must be as barmy as the old woman and had called the police and a police doctor and left.
She’d waited for the police, aware that Gibbon’s mother was beyond coping with the situation, and had to deal with the woman’s hysterics when she saw her son’
s body and the truth registered.
A policewoman had turned up to handle the woman and Charley had finally left some time after five in the morning. It had been light when she’d got home and she had been glad about that.
There had been three messages from Tom on the answering machine. One early on Sunday morning leaving a phone number and a room number; a hotel, she thought. The second was on Monday morning. He was in the office all day, he said. The third was Monday night. He was going to Scotland on a custody case; he would call with his numbers when he got there.
She had gone to bed and tried to sleep, but the events of the past two days had replayed in her mind, over and over, and her regression had too, so vivid that each time she awoke, bathed in sweat, she was convinced it was still going on. Convinced that the woman with the hair burned to stubble and the blackened face was standing in the doorway watching her. Then convinced that she was in an ambulance and was dying, but they would not let her die, would not let her go.
Epileptic. Some of your symptoms are consistent with … fine; that was all it was. Temporal lobe epilepsy. Delusions. Hallucinations.
The congregation knelt for the final prayers, and the service was over. The family came down the aisle first: a tubby elderly man, who bore a vague facial resemblance to Viola Letters led the way stiffly down the aisle, arm in arm with an elegant, ashen-faced woman. An assortment of age groups followed from the front pews, smart little children and pukka adults, different to the locals, who had come to say goodbye to a friend. The locals looked sad; the family mostly looked merely dutiful.
‘Hallo, it’s Mrs Witney, isn’t it?’ said the vicar, with a jollity in his voice that Charley thought would be more appropriate at a wedding. He shook her hand vigorously. ‘You’re new arrivals in the village, aren’t you? I’ve been meaning to come and introduce myself.’
Charley stepped out of the porch into the dull grey morning, into the knot of people and the babble of voices.
‘Rattled through the service a bit quickly, didn’t he?’ Zoe murmured to her.
She nodded absently, remembering Viola Letters’s complaint to her about the vicar, and they joined the trail of mourners behind the pall bearers who were carrying the coffin up the path.
The sky was charcoal grey above them and a wind was blowing through the graveyard. The coffin sat on its ropes on the green baize carpet.
‘ … we therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body …’
Change. Resurrection to eternal life. Eternal life here on earth. With eternal memories. Eternal change, eternal memories, eternally haunted by the past.
‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.’
Charley wandered away, thoughts drifting through her mind, away from the crowd, through the gravestones, past marble headstones with gravelled fronts, stones carved into scrolls, stones the shape of open books, stones with angels, new stones, bright and shiny, old stones, aged, stained, the writing barely legible, some leaning badly and some set in the ground and overgrown with grass and lichen. Some had vases of fresh flowers, or wreathes, some empty urns, forgotten, no one left to tend them.
She walked up the gentle slope, stepping around the slabs and the gravel, barely noticing anything except the occasional name or inscription.
‘Ernest Arthur Lamb who fell asleep.’
‘There’s a land where those who loved when here shall meet to love again.’
There was a smell of autumn in the air; it suited the cold stones of death.
‘John Rowe Buckmaster. Gentle in life, serene in death.’
‘Barbara Jarrett. D. Aug 12th 1953.’
‘Alice Madeleine Wells.’
Charley stopped. Stepped back, read the inscription on the plain tombstone again.
‘Barbara Jarrett. D. Aug 12th, 1953.
The twelfth of August 1953.
She had been born that day.
She stood and stared at the plain headstone, dull, no other writing on it, so plain that she had nearly passed it without a glance.
Dear Rock, I love him. Please bring him back, Barbara.
The inscription on the locket. D loves BJ.
BJ.
Someone came up and stood beside her. It was Hugh. ‘We’re invited to the wake; they’re having a little do at the George.’
‘Right.’
‘Would you like me to wait?’
‘No. Go on. I might be a while.’
‘Are you OK?’
She nodded.
‘Can I buy you dinner tonight? Cheer you up?’
‘I’ll buy,’ she said flatly, without taking her eyes from the gravestone. ‘It’s my turn.’
Hugh looked at the stone. ‘Someone you knew?’
‘Maybe.’
He walked away, and she shivered. Meaningless. Coincidence, that was all. She turned and watched as Hugh joined the last of the mourners who were filing through the lychgate. There was the scrape of a shovel and the rattle of earth. It sounded like a collection box. Mother Nature was collecting again.
‘Know how to get there?’ a voice boomed out. ‘Follow us.’
Barbara Jarrett. D. August 12th, 1953.
There was grass in front of the headstone. No smart border to keep dogs off, no scrolls or cherubs or urn or flowers. No ‘In loving memory of’, no ‘Beloved wife of’. Nothing. Just the name, the date.
Another time, dear, we’ll talk about it, another time.
She thought of the old man in Saddler Cottages who had closed the door in her face. Go away. Leave us alone. Go away. We don’t want you here.
Two old people. Viola Letters had noticed something in a photograph; Arthur Morrison in her face.
The stone suddenly changed colour, brightened, as if someone had shone a torch on to it. She jumped, then felt foolish. It was only the sunlight finding a hole in the cloud.
The electrician’s rather dinky van was parked at the foot of the steps, and Charley was relieved there was someone in the house. White tapes were still stretched across the footpath; one had come free and jigged in a gust like a streamer. Constable Tidyman had told her at the wake that it was their responsibility to mend the bank. It was a public footpath and would have to be done soon.
It was hard to believe it was only four months since they had first seen the house. Since the excitement, the sense of peace, of hope. She could still remember the sensation that something was missing. The stables. Except they weren’t missing any more. They were there, the other side of the mill race where they had always been, smart white stables. The head of a chestnut horse was looking out of one of the looseboxes. Jemma.
She blinked.
It was still there.
She whirled round. Her car was gone. The electrician’s van was gone. The black Triumph was there instead, its roof down, its paintwork gleaming, its chrome shining. She looked up at the house. The window frames had been freshly painted, the brickwork repointed. She turned back to the weir. There were no white tapes, no chunk missing from the bank.
Her blood sifted through her veins like sand through a timer.
She closed her eyes, opened them again. A horse in the stables whinnied. The sand still poured but it was getting noisier and she could hear the faint hissing sound; then she realised it was the roar of the weir, that was all.
Come to the wrong house, she thought. I’ve come to the wrong house, took a wrong turning —
I try to do everything here in a controlled way. If you are getting uncomfortable or frightened, I can bring you back out, quickly. If you were to start regressing on your own, somewhere away from here, and the figure in the mirror took hold then —
Why should it? It’s only something in my memory.
I don’t know if it is just memory.
She blinked again. T
he black Triumph had gone. The stables had gone too. The white tapes were back, and half the bank was missing. The house looked old and tatty and plastic sheeting flapped over the builders’ pile of materials. Two long ladders lay against the side of the house. Ben was barking inside.
She touched the side of the Citroën to steady herself; she was gulping down air as if she had just swum a couple of lengths of a pool underwater, scared, scared because Gibbon had not brought her back out.
You’re OK, fine, came out of the trance naturally. You’re tired now, that’s all, tired and in shock; people often have weird hallucinations when they’re overtired.
She went into the house. Ben came running up and as she bent to pat him she saw something move out of the corner of her eye, something coming down the staircase.
Her head snapped up. The electrician. It was the electrician walking slowly, strangely slowly, his face sheet white, his eyes open in shock; the short, chalky man who was normally so busy, so energetic, was treading his way carefully down the dust sheet, clutching on to the bannister rail like an old man. ‘Was it you?’ he said. ‘Was it you what turned it on?’
‘Pardon?’
He pressed his hand against his mouth. When he removed it, she could see a black mark running across the palm. ‘The power,’ he said. ‘Did you turn the power back on?’
‘I’ve just come in the door.’
‘You in’t been down the cellar?’
‘No.’
‘Some joker ’as. I turned the mains off, din’t I, to rewire your bedroom sockets. Someone’s switched it back on.’ He held out his hand. ‘See the burn.’
‘God! I’ve got some dressings in the kitchen —’
‘S’orl right.’ His eyes darted around.
‘Is it one of the builders who did it?’
‘They ain’t been here today.’ He examined the burn. ‘I dunno what’s going on. I’ve changed all the wirin’ and the fittins.’ He sucked his hand. ‘Let me show you somethin’, Mrs Witney.’ He walked down the passageway a short way and stopped by a wall switch.
