The Pull of the Moon

by Diane Janes

  I spend a few minutes staring at each of the houses in turn, wondering which of them is inhabited by the pesky Gwenda: hoping I’ve chosen a spot which is obscured from her net curtain twitching by the row of trees which edges the pavement.

  Some of the houses in Menlove Avenue have acquired UPVC window frames or trendy blinds, but the one I come to see hasn’t changed much in twenty years. The front garden still runs its annual cycle of daffodils, roses and fallen leaves. There used to be a stone sundial but that went a long time ago -vandalized perhaps, or pinched; it goes on even in the better neighbourhoods these days, in spite of what Marjorie might like to think. They’ve had those orangey-brown curtains up for about three years. The previous pair were a blue and silver stripe.

  From where I’m sitting, I can see when their hall light goes on; then the upstairs bay is illuminated, almost to the second when its ground-floor counterpart goes dark. I can’t see inside the bedroom from this angle, but I glimpse the hand that draws the curtains – a woman’s hand – or maybe it’s a man’s – impossible to see from this distance. Sometimes I imagine I can see more than I really do.

  The bedroom curtains are pale beige with a pattern of flowers. The curtains must be lined because once drawn they trap the light inside, reducing it to a pale glow against the darker brickwork; and after a few minutes this dims still further. They must have switched off the main light – probably sitting up in bed, reading perhaps, or supping Horlicks by the light of the bedside lamp. I don’t know why I imagine bedside lamps rather than wall lights.

  Another car takes me by surprise. I failed to notice its approach and shrink back into my seat in the split second that the headlights sweep across me. It continues out of sight, leaving me alone to my vigil.

  When the window goes completely dark, I start the engine and drive away.

  ELEVEN

  Each of us approached the upcoming seance in our own way, keeping whatever doubts we entertained to ourselves. I put a good face on it – not wanting to be labelled a scaredy cat. It wasn’t that I was scared of the supernatural – which I didn’t entirely believe in: I was much more afraid of becoming so taut with nerves that I jumped or squealed at anything, thereby attracting ridicule when it turned out to be a great big tease. Simon seemed much as usual. He told us a long involved story which culminated in a fellow student accidentally ending up locked out of his room, standing stark naked on a ledge outside his window. Simon’s deliberate drawl invariably added to our hilarity, but somehow I sensed that tonight no one was giving him their full attention. Trudie seemed charged with nervous excitement, as if possessed of a secret she was dying to share with the rest of us, but could not. She was planning a virtuoso performance, no doubt about it, I thought. Yet, of the four of us, I fancy it was Danny who was most affected. I don’t think the others noticed, but I detected an artificial heartiness in his voice and saw his fingers stray several times towards his neck, seeking the missing talisman.

  As the sun was dipping behind the shrubbery, Trudie observed that she felt chilly and went inside to put on something warmer. I got up and followed her into the house to use the bathroom. When I emerged on to the landing, Trudie was just coming out of her bedroom. On catching sight of me she beckoned excitedly, saying, ‘Come and see.’

  I accompanied her into the room, picking my way across the tangle of discarded clothing strewn across the floor. Trudie’s bedroom window faced west and was high enough to afford a view over the shrubbery, straight down the hill to Bettis Wood. The sun’s topmost edge was disappearing behind the tree tops, which were strangely aglow with its dying light.

  ‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘Red, like blood. I’ve never seen it do that before. It’s a sign.’

  ‘It’s just the sunset. A trick of the light.’

  Trudie shook her head. ‘It’s a sign,’ she said emphatically. Something in her voice unnerved me. I was uncomfortably aware that Trudie was no longer the ringmaster, putting on a show for us. Trudie believed in this stuff and was scared by it. She was no longer in control.

  The red glow faded from the tree tops – the change took a matter of seconds, then the sun was gone and the wood stood greenish black in the dusk, just as usual. The moment was over. The sound of Danny’s guitar drifted up to us from the lawn. He was playing ‘Moonshadow’.

  ‘What do you think the lyrics mean?’ asked Trudie – and I noted with relief that she seemed back to normal.

  ‘I dunno – they’re a bit weird, aren’t they?’

  ‘I think the moonshadow is your fate,’ she said. ‘Everyone is pursued by their moonshadow and it always catches up with you, in the end. You just have to accept whatever comes.’

  I didn’t bother to reply. I had wasted too many school lunch breaks dissecting lyrics to divine their inner meanings.

  When we got back to the garden, Danny and Simon were talking about the time when they had seen Ralph McTell at Birmingham Town Hall, Danny punctuating their remarks with occasional chords on his guitar. Everything seemed calm and ordinary again, except for Danny every so often glancing at his watch. By eleven-thirty we began to run out of conversation. The air had become oppressive, but I decided a storm couldn’t be imminent because the stars were still visible. Danny had been checking his watch at increasingly frequent intervals, until I begged him to desist as it was getting on my nerves.

  ‘Why don’t we go up now and get it over with?’ he suggested, feigning a disinterested tone. ‘Then we can all go to bed. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m cream-crackered.’

  ‘Might as well,’ agreed Simon. ‘I don’t suppose your ghosts can tell the time anyway – do you reckon they’re on British Summer Time or not?’

  Trudie didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘If everyone’s ready, let’s go up.’

  As we rose to our feet, a breeze like a breath of hot air shimmered across the garden. Suddenly I didn’t want to go into the house at all. It loomed over us, a dark hulk of a place, full of whispers and secrets – when we got inside and Simon switched on the kitchen lights, the glare seemed intense. We stood for a moment, blinking and uncertain, like burglars caught in the act.

  Trudie led the way upstairs. She had apparently regained her confidence, automatically assuming leadership of the project. Simon’s foot caught against the corner of a wooden chest which stood on the landing at the top of the stairs: the resultant bang echoed around the stairwell.

  ‘Bloody hell, man,’ said Danny. ‘Talk about waking the dead. There’s no need to give them advance notice.’

  He spoke in obvious jest, but there was no trace of irony in Trudie’s reply. ‘It’s all right. She already knows we’re coming. She’s pleased. It’s what she wants.’

  We had become accustomed to referring to Murdered Agnes in this casual fashion, but Trudie’s statement chilled me; it conjured up a mental image of Murdered Agnes calmly awaiting us in the chosen room. When Trudie opened the door, I was almost surprised to find everything just as we had left it. The air was heady with incense and the candles were still burning. It came to me that they ought not to have been. They should have burnt out long ago. I reminded myself that Trudie had slipped away several times during the evening, presumably to replenish them.

  In accordance with the instructions Trudie had issued earlier, we sat cross-legged in a circle on the floor, holding hands. In best dinner-party fashion, we arranged ourselves boy, girl, boy, girl, maintaining the silence which Trudie had emphasized was essential. ‘Once the circle is made, it mustn’t be broken,’ she’d warned us, so I had my plan of action clear – keep quiet and hold hands – which suited me just fine.

  Once we were settled into position, a stillness fell upon the room. The candle flames had been disturbed by our movements, but now they burned steady and clear. From where I was sitting I could see a line of light from the landing, where the door and the floorboards didn’t quite meet. I had tinkered with ouija and seances at school, as teenage girls did and probably stil
l do; but these sessions had invariably dissolved into giggles, or else a member of the party had succumbed to the temptation to make strange noises and had to be ticked off by the rest for not taking the enterprise seriously. I had half expected Danny or Simon to adopt this line, but neither of them did. The silence became intense – eventually broken by Trudie’s voice, low, melodious, inviting: ‘You can come to us. We are ready.’

  There was another pause. I noticed Danny’s crucifix, twinkling mischievously in the candlelight.

  ‘I can see her.’ Trudie exhaled the words softly.

  I raised my eyes to see where Trudie was looking – for a split second anticipating a vision of Murdered Agnes in the room with us: but Trudie’s eyes were closed. Whatever she was seeing was safely confined in her head.

  Danny squeezed my hand, whether in reassurance or to share the joke, I never knew. I didn’t look at him.

  Trudie began to speak in a low, dreamy voice. In spite of our proximity, I could barely hear her. ‘She’s going into the wood. She isn’t afraid – in fact she’s laughing and happy . . . It’s getting dark among the trees, so I can’t see her very well – wait, Agnes – don’t go so fast . . . There’s a man – a man with dark hair and a beard . . .’

  So much for that, I thought. It’s exactly what was printed in the magazine.

  ‘He’s her friend, so Agnes isn’t afraid. Wait . . .’ I felt the hairs rising on the back of my neck in direct parallel with the increasing tension in Trudie’s voice. ‘He’s not with her – she’s on her own – looking around – lost in the dark – dark all around . . .’ Trudie’s voice rose. I calmed myself with the thought that she was one hell of an actress.

  ‘No!’ She almost shouted the word. ‘Agnes – he’s come up behind her – Agnes – I see her now – clearly. She has long dark hair – she looks like me—’ Trudie burst into noisy sobs. ‘It is me – she has my face.’

  As I broke away, I realized that my nails must have been digging into the backs of Simon’s fingers. I scrambled round behind Danny to reach Trudie, putting my arms around her and holding her, cradling her back and forth like a child while the candles, which had been disturbed by these sudden movements, sent our shadows gyrating wildly across the walls and ceiling. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have broken the circle,’ she whispered through tears.

  Simon stood up and switched on the lights. Danny retrieved his crucifix and snuffed out the candles. As Trudie clambered to her feet, the first rumbles of thunder reverberated through the house. Simon took over as comforter. I heard him offering to sleep in Trudie’s room with her, to which she mumbled her thanks.

  The storm which had been so slow in coming intensified in the space of a moment, the thunder bouncing off the roof, chasing us on to the landing. While Simon escorted Trudie to her room, his arm draped protectively around her shoulders, Danny and I almost ran into our own little sanctuary, shutting the door behind us as if barring the way against foes unseen, then laughing nervously at each other while throwing our clothes off in an unspoken contest to be first into bed. Meantime the storm continued at full tilt – B movie thunder, with lightning illuminating the room at regular intervals.

  Our familiar bed was an island of normality, a safe haven from Trudie and all her nonsense. Once naked under the sheets I huddled against Danny, feeling the cool shape of his crucifix imprinting itself in my cheek. He planted a couple of kisses on the top of my head, before asking: ‘Do you think she really saw anything?’

  ‘Well, she thinks she did: but she was very worked up beforehand. The whole thing is probably a product of her own imagination.’

  ‘More than likely,’ agreed Danny. He sounded relieved. I had never thought of him as superstitious. Maybe it was his Catholic upbringing – the constant presence of all those long-dead saints, hovering about in the ether, awaiting the intercessions of the faithful.

  ‘If she suggests doing anything like this again, I don’t think we should agree to it,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed at once. ‘She’ll only get upset.’

  I lay in his arms, mentally reliving Trudie’s distress. Trudie had become altogether too wrapped up in the story of Murdered Agnes. Was it right to allow a schoolgirl to frighten herself half to death? I had somehow acquiesced to keeping Trudie’s secret by default, but now I began to question the rightness of it afresh.

  A flash of lightning all but coincided with a thunderclap.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘The storm must be almost directly overhead.’ Another simultaneous flash and bang confirmed the truth of this, half deafening me and causing both of us to jump involuntarily, then laugh at each other.

  ‘There’s a way of calculating how far away the storm is,’ Danny said. ‘You count the number of seconds between seeing the flash and hearing the bang; then multiply it by one number and divide by another and it gives you the distance in miles.’

  The moment for a tête-à-tête about runaway schoolgirl Trudie Finch had passed: lost in the tumult of the storm.

  I assumed Simon’s overnight stay in Trudie’s room would prove the catalyst in their relationship, but after that one night Simon went back to sleeping alone. There was no upping of the tempo between them, but there was no obvious awkwardness either. I confess that I was baffled. Trudie seemed to grow daily ever more beautiful. How could Simon possibly be immune to her? As the days passed I caught myself admiring her more and more. I started hauling my T-shirt up and knotting it under the bust, but somehow it never looked so good on me. Maybe Simon found her a bit too immature, with her imaginings and amateur dramatics – although there could be no doubt that her fear on the night of the seance had been real. I decided it would be a kindness to find ways of distracting Trudie from her unfortunate preoccupation with the late Agnes Payne.

  Nor was Trudie the only one who needed distractions. My initial euphoria at being perpetually on holiday was gradually beginning to wane. The heat pressed down on us, day after day, its heaviness infecting everything: even time slowed to a crawl, making our days stretch out endlessly, each a little longer than the one before. We were effectively stranded at the house unless Simon was available to drive us – but Simon and Danny were focusing on their work in the garden, keeping their bargain with Simon’s uncle. Once or twice I caught myself wondering if it wouldn’t have been more fun going to France with Cecile – thoughts which I banished at once, not only because they felt disloyal to Danny, but also because they made mock of my own choices. No one had forced me to go to Herefordshire.

  At the outset, of course, I had anticipated a much livelier household altogether. I didn’t realize until the last minute that the party would be confined to the three of us, and by then I was so excited that it didn’t seem to matter. There had been such a sense of enthusiasm and purpose at the beginning – a week before departure day we met for an evening in a pub, where we drew up shopping lists and Simon showed us sketches of the proposed new garden features, which we discussed with a zest which was never quite recaptured once the actual digging began. By the end of that evening, no one could have faulted our team spirit or total commitment to the endeavour. It never occurred to me to question whether Simon and I could spend the whole summer cooped up in the same house. I blithely assumed that our mutual fondness for Danny would give us enough in common.

  The house itself provided its own set of disappointments and frustrations. There was no mains gas, so we relied on an ancient electric cooker whose rings took an age to warm up, then burned everything the instant I turned away. Needless to say the saucepans were not non-stick, so they invariably required a sustained attack with a Brillo pad. I was engaged in one such session when Simon walked into the kitchen, a couple of days after the seance.

  ‘I hate this bloody house,’ I said, flinging the dirty pan into the suds with enough force to send a miniature tidal wave across the big white sink.

  ‘Well, go home then,’ Simon retorted crossly.


  ‘You know perfectly well that I can’t go home,’ I began, but he had already gone.

  Wounded, I abandoned the washing-up and sought out Danny, who was kneeling in the excavation, attacking some old tree roots with a pair of secateurs. He stopped work and squinted up at me. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Simon has just been horrible to me, in the kitchen.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘He said if I didn’t like it here, I should go home.’

  Danny hesitated a second, before saying, ‘Well . . . that’s not unreasonable . . .’

  ‘He snapped at me.’

  ‘I’m sure it was nothing to get upset about. He won’t have meant anything. Si’s the nicest guy in the world.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘I’m not on anyone’s side,’ said Danny, evenly. ‘But it’s a hot day and Si’s probably tired. We all have to make occasional allowances for one another. There’s sure to be a few disagreements. You’re too sensitive, sweetie, that’s the trouble. Just forget about it, okay?’

  Danny was right of course. We all had to make an effort not to provoke unnecessary arguments. I didn’t encounter Simon again until the end of the afternoon, when neither of us referred to the exchange in the kitchen. By then Danny was in a particularly ebullient mood, determined to keep us all laughing, topping up our glasses before we had emptied them. I knew I ought to try harder for his sake – he so much wanted Simon and me to get along – but his refusal to choose between us kept drifting back into my thoughts. I recalled the balloon debates my school had been fond of holding, where the premise was that someone had to be voted out of the basket in order to keep the balloon in the air. Suppose Danny were faced with a choice between me and Simon – who would he vote to save?