If anything, the dead-eyed face was worse than she had remembered it. There were dark shadows under those awful pale eyes that made the dull whites stand out under the heavy lids. The grey irises that had been so beautiful when there was a light behind them now seemed like those of a blind man.
‘What do you want?’ whimpered Emma. ‘Why are you looking at me? Why are you following me?’
‘Emma!’ whispered her mother. ‘Please control yourself. You haven’t been well but you really must show some restraint. You’ve become obsessed with this creature and it must stop. He is a simpleton. He cannot help it. You must learn to ignore him.’
‘That simpleton, as you call him, is my son,’ said Gerald’s mother coldly, appearing suddenly beside them and looking at Emma with disdain.
‘Well, he’s upsetting my daughter,’ said Mrs Reynolds, immediately on the defensive, roused by the woman’s hostile tone.
‘My son is doing nothing, madam. He is certainly not being rude or offensive.’
‘Perhaps he ought not to be in such crowded places,’ said Emma’s mother with a purse of her lips.
Gerald made a sudden lurch towards Emma and she could stand it no longer. She turned on her heels and ran, blundering blindly through the crowd, her mother calling after her.
She burst out into an alleyway, cobbled and dark, great warehouses towering overhead on one side, a high wall on the other. The only other sign of life in the alley besides herself was a gaily coloured cart she took a few moments to realise was the puppet show she had enjoyed so much.
‘Now, then,’ said the puppet master with a smile, appearing around the side of the cart. ‘And what have we here?’
g
g
Emma had always been told never to talk to strangers, and ordinarily she would have walked away from this odd little man with his waxed moustache and garish make-up, but on this occasion she felt that he was by far the lesser of two evils.
‘Please,’ said Emma. ‘There is a boy. He’s following me.’
The puppet master’s eyebrows went up and down and he grinned, tapping the side of his nose.
‘Aha!’ he said. ‘The course of true love and so on.’
Emma blushed and frowned.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not like that at all.’
‘Never mind,’ said the puppet master. ‘We shall hide you, shan’t we, boys and girls?’
It took Emma a couple of seconds to realise he was talking to the puppets in the back of the cart, who were hanging rather forlornly from a frame.
‘How do you do, young madam,’ said the puppet master with a bow. ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.’
‘How do you do,’ said Emma, casting a worried glance over her shoulder. ‘I saw your show not long ago.’
‘You did?’ he said. ‘And did you enjoy it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Emma. ‘I love puppets. I love the costumes. I love the dancing. I love everything about them.’
‘Really?’ said the puppet master, clapping his hands together. ‘Well, that’s wonderful. That’s just wonderful.’
Emma smiled. He seemed genuinely moved.
‘Listen,’ he said, turning to root about in the cart. ‘As you enjoy puppets so much, I may have something of interest.’
He continued his search until he made a small cry and turned round holding a puppet.
‘Oh, she’s beautiful!’ Emma gasped.
‘Looks a little like you, doesn’t she?’ said the puppet master with an arch of one eyebrow.
And it was true: the puppet did look a little like Emma. In fact, it was rather a lot like her, wearing a dress like hers and a neat pair of boots that looked like the ones she had begged her mother for. The hair was especially like hers.
‘Is that real hair?’ said Emma, but then she noticed that the puppet master was holding another puppet at his side. That one also looked rather familiar.
It was a perfect miniature of Gerald in every way except that, strangely, the puppet version had more life than the living one. Its face seemed animated by comparison.
‘Dance for the lady,’ said the puppet master.
To Emma’s amazement, the puppet that looked like Gerald, and the others hanging from the frame, began to move about slowly.
‘Come on,’ said the puppet master, an angry note in his voice. ‘Do you call that dancing? Dance!’
The puppets responded by speeding up their movements until they were cavorting wildly about.
‘How do you do that?’ said Emma, smiling at the capering puppets. The puppet master tapped the side of his nose again and winked.
‘I cannot tell you all my secrets now, can I?’ he said. ‘Here. You can have a look at Harlequin if you like.’
And without a reply from Emma, he placed the puppet of the harlequin in her hands. She gasped. It was exquisite. Then it moved. It turned its head and looked at her.
Emma dropped the puppet to the ground as though it were white hot, and the puppet master laughed. It was another clever trick, thought Emma. How on earth had he done it? But even as she had these thoughts, the harlequin puppet got to its tiny feet and walked back to the puppet master. Emma felt suddenly dizzy.
Of course. This is what she had seen, and half recognised, running across the lawn the night of her dream. It was he who had been in her room, he who had cut her hair and taken it and brought it back to this man, so that he could make a puppet of her with her own hair. But why?
Emma suddenly experienced a feeling of falling, a breathless collapsing, as if she were drifting through space like thistledown, drifting on a warm summer wind.
Then, all at once, she was looking back at herself, looking back as she felt the rumble of cartwheels beneath her, looking back at the empty girl in the alleyway who had been Emma but was now barely anything at all, save for blood and bones and pale, tired flesh.
The better part of that which had been Emma swayed gently in the frame. She turned to face the Gerald puppet and realised too late that the boy he had been was trying to warn her, even in her dreams – to frighten her away from the puppet show and the fate that she would share. But to no avail.
‘Come along, my beauties,’ said the puppet master. ‘Time to find some new children to play with.’
And with that he flicked the reins and the cart gathered speed, clattering away down the cobbled alley.
*
It was as if my life force had been likewise taken from me, as again I felt myself drifting away, so that though I could hear the Woman in White, her voice sounded increasingly ethereal and echoey.
‘Do you enjoy the theatre?’ she was saying.
‘I used to like puppet shows as a child,’ I said, pulling myself together. ‘Whenever we saw one I would always rush over to watch. I had to be prised away. I always found them fascinating.’
‘Rather like Emma,’ she said with a grin.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I answered, not entirely convinced that I wanted to be linked with that unfortunate girl. ‘I think I was always a bit frightened by the puppets though,’ I added, remembering the odd frisson of trepidation their little painted faces would induce in me.
The image of that cart filled with hanging puppets burst into my mind like a bolt of lightning. I could almost hear the cart clattering away, and once again I had the distinct impression of something else just out of my sightline, something that was there but that I couldn’t make myself see. All I knew was that it was something more terrible than the puppet master.
‘And what of real theatre?’ said the Woman in White. ‘What of real, live actors?’
I was happy to rid myself of the vision and, shaking my head drunkenly, blushed at an amusing recollection. She raised an eyebrow. I grinned sheepishly.
‘A few of us from my last school travelled up to London one Saturday and went to the music hall. It was deuced good fun. There was a man who escaped from a tank full of water, and a dog that could sing the National Anthem.’
‘It sounds delightful,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid some of the humour there would shock you,’ I said.
She smiled.
‘There was one lady who . . .’ I began, but I saw no polite way of describing what the lady actually did, and so I looked bashfully towards the sleeping Bishop and rubbed my hands together.
‘And what of real theatre?’ she asked. ‘What of the Bard, of Shakespeare?’
‘I don’t think I’ve seen enough to pass judgement,’ I said. ‘My father took me to see Macbeth once. That was very entertaining.’
‘Ah – Macbeth,’ she said. ‘An excellent choice. And why do you think you enjoyed that play so much?’
These words took an age to reach my ears, as if there were a ravine between us rather than a few feet of floor. The air seemed to have congealed and I felt as though we were suspended in aspic. I fixed all my remaining powers of attention on the Woman in White and tried to make my brain form an answer.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose I like the story of the witches and the premonition and so on, despite what you have said about my love of the rational. And I do like gruesome stories, as you know; Macbeth does have a lot of blood and murder and ghosts and what not.’
‘Yes it does,’ she said.
I closed my eyes for an instant, but immediately opened them after experiencing an awful sensation of falling.
‘And of course I like anything to do with history,’ I went on. ‘Knights and warriors and all that. I’d love to be able to travel back in time and see what it was really like in those days.’
‘Would you?’ she said with no enthusiasm. Girls never did seem as interested in these things somehow. That was part of the reason they were such poor company, in my opinion.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous to be able to stand and watch the Battle of Hastings or the Siege of Troy? I can’t imagine anything more exciting.’
The Woman in White gave me a rather pitying look.
‘Battlefields are less exciting than you might think.’
She said these words with a strange and cold authority for one who couldn’t possibly have had any experience of warfare. But then it hit me.
‘Are you perhaps a nurse, miss?’ I said, wagging an index finger in the air in the manner of a university professor solving a particularly taxing mathematical problem.
She cocked her head and smiled.
‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘No, dear boy, I am not a nurse. Though I have often been called upon to visit the sick, and the sick have, I hope, sometimes taken comfort in those visits.’
The Woman in White looked down at her watch.
‘What is the time?’ I asked.
‘But I have another story for you,’ she said. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
I frowned at her lack of response to my question but I couldn’t hold her gaze and, with a sigh, nodded my agreement. To be honest, I felt too weary to argue.
‘Lovely,’ she said, tapping her fingertips together. ‘It concerns a nun.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said jauntily. ‘Her name was . . . Well, you shall see what her name was. Let’s begin.’
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Sister Veronica
Sister Veronica ran the back of her hand across her forehead, mopping up the beads of perspiration that had gathered there. She breathed deeply through her nose, her nostrils flaring as she did so. She composed herself and smiled her brilliant white smile, a smile that Mother Superior had said could light up the darkest of hours.
‘You can shout and scream as much as you like, silly child,’ she said. ‘These old walls are awful thick and we are a long way from town. No one is going to hear you and no one would care if they could.’
Sister Veronica lifted the hazel switch above her right shoulder and brought it down, its angular trajectory marked by a high-pitched whistle until it hit the bare legs of the girl with a brittle crack.
The girl squealed in pain and Sister Veronica pursed her lips before raising the switch and bringing it down again. Whistle. Crack. Squeal.
Sister Veronica closed her eyes and let her heartbeat slow its giddy fluttering. The girl whimpered and sobbed, pressing her face into her outstretched arms, the knuckles standing out as she clutched the edge of the tabletop. Slowly, Sister Veronica came out of her trance.
‘Come, child,’ she said, the usual headache forming. ‘We must all endeavour to be more like the saints, who bore their sufferings with such grace and fortitude and dignity.’
The girl winced and slid from the table, walking as best as she could to stand with the watching girls.
‘Though, of course,’ continued Sister Veronica, ‘the blessed saints would not have been caught stealing from the kitchens now, would they?’
Sister Veronica allowed herself a smile at this joke, but it faded fast as smiles will when they are starved of company. The girls had heard Sister Veronica’s thoughts on the dignified suffering of the saints many times before – many, many times. These words were often accompanied by her wide and white-toothed smile. And a beating.
‘Now then, girls,’ said Sister Veronica, though she was scarcely more than a girl herself. It had not been so many years since she was among their number. ‘As you all knew of Christine’s sin of theft and did not report it, none of you will be attending the village fete this year.’
Like a showman working a crowd in a music hall, Sister Veronica left a pause for the groan she was sure would come, but there was silence.
‘Instead,’ she continued, ‘we will see if we cannot improve those shabby souls of yours. We will use this time in the study of art, which God has gifted to man alone among his creations, so that we might be given some small glimmer of knowledge of the glory that is heaven.’
Again, Sister Veronica was surprised that no grumble or moan greeted this speech. In fact, the girls seemed to be listening in rapt attention. Perhaps she was finally getting through to these poor creatures.
For though Sister Veronica, in the dark minutes before sleep pulled her under, was plagued by doubts – terrible, terrible doubts – she truly believed that it was her calling to bring these girls to a state of grace.
Sister Veronica felt that it was part of this calling to bestow some of her appreciation of art upon her girls – though only of religious art, of course, not the vulgar French paintings with which her father had filled the family house.
A true work of art, for Sister Veronica, was one that brought her closer to God, that transported her out of the grubby, dull concerns of the mortal world.
But these girls were so dull and their concerns were so very mortal. There was only one among them who showed the slightest feeling for the divine ecstasy that a painting might evoke; only Barbara seemed to truly appreciate the wonderful otherness of art. But now, even Barbara was lost to her.
Barbara blamed her for what happened to Mary McGreevy, she knew that. But how could she be held responsible for the fate of that ridiculous girl? How could she possibly be blamed for the fact that silly Mary McGreevy was constantly in trouble?
Sister Veronica had been charged with disciplining the girl, and had she not been a nasty, ill-tempered and vindictive little minx, she would not have needed to be punished so often.
Sister Veronica herself had been beaten back when she was just plain Catherine Connor, had she not? She had been foolish and frivolous and tempted by sin and she had been beaten. It had made her strong. It had given her a brief and sacred insight into the sufferings of the saints. It had brought her to God.
But Mary McGreevy was never going to see the light of His grace. She could never understand what it meant to serve anyone but herself. And if further proof was needed of the girl’s hell-bound nature, she finally committed the dreadful sin of suicide.
Barbara, sweet Barbara, had insisted – inexplicably, infuriatingly – on regarding silly, wilful Mary McGreevy as a special friend. Sister Veronica had seen them talki
ng and giggling like village girls and had been surprised at how angry it had made her. All the girls had seemed in thrall to Mary. But how could a girl like Barbara keep company with such a flighty thing? It was unaccountably vexing.
And now, ever since that foolish child had consigned herself to hell by taking her own life, Barbara had barely spoken to Sister Veronica. She had taken to staring at her during mass in a quite insolent way. Had it been any of the other girls, Sister Veronica would have beaten them; oh, how she would have beaten them. But she could not do that to Barbara. Not Barbara.
‘Do you see here, children?’ said Sister Veronica with a smile so bright it made the nearest girl flinch, pointing to one of the small paintings showing the Stations of the Cross. ‘This is St Veronica, after whom I am named.’ She smiled, letting that fact sink in, biting the inside of her cheek with the dark thrill of being so near to the sin of pride. ‘See how she wipes the blessed brow of our dear Lord?’
Sister Veronica stared at the picture with a far-away expression on her face: an expression that the girls had to come to both recognise and fear.
‘Can any of you, I wonder, imagine what that must have been like, to have been so close to our Saviour and to have been of service to Him in His hour of struggle?’
None of the girls answered. They had learned by long and painful experience that anything they said might bring on one of Sister Veronica’s rages. Silence could also bring on a rage, of course, but on the whole it seemed safer to simply return her gaze without any comment or expression. Sister Veronica looked at the girls through half-closed eyes and shook her head.
‘But how could you?’ she said. ‘How could girls such as you understand a thing like that? How could you understand what it is to put yourself at the service of others, as St Veronica did and as we do here?’
Sister Veronica took her art classes very seriously. She was not without some talent herself, though she tried not to take too much pride in the fact; sometimes she had to punish herself by destroying a drawing she was especially fond of, and she hated to do that.
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth Page 11
