Julia glanced at me, then back at Gordon, alarmed again. “You have to offer something? What …?” She could not bring herself to finish the question. I knew how she felt.
“Gordon?”
He smiled, looking embarrassed. “It’s nothing. It’s not. Really. Don’t worry about it.” He clapped his hands together, warming them. “Anyway, it’s late. I must be getting back. The dogs’ll be worried sick.”
He refused to explain further, and extricated himself. He and Rutherford left. Soon I heard the low rumble of the Bentley’s massive engine, and the crunch of its wheels on the gravel driveway.
Julia looked worried, and very tired. “I should never have come … ”
“If you had not come, we would not know what we now know.”
She shrugged. “I could certainly do with another brandy, if that’s all right.”
I agreed. A little later, we sat back in the perhaps too-comfortable chairs in front of the diminishing fire, which popped and cracked, and occasionally spat hot bits of charcoal out at us, only to be intercepted by the mesh screen. We watched the fire a long time. Julia told me stories about some of my other relatives back home. Inconsequential stories, small victories here, petty jealousies there, devious one-upmanship all around. To hear her tell it, my extended family was a nest of vipers alive with powerful emotions but much too polite to do anything straightforward and upfront with them. Everything was a scheme or a plot, wheels within bloody wheels, constant tedious intrigue. I had come out to Australia in part to escape from their endless pettiness and machinations. Life, I had learned the hard way, was far too short. People here, by stark contrast, were frank, straightforward, and blunt. What you saw was what you got. If, in the course of walking along Pelican Terrace, I ran into Fran from the bakery, I knew she was likely to tell me off about my clothes, or urge me to get a decent ladylike haircut. I rarely had the feeling that people spoke behind my back, full of bile. There had been many times, in my life here, when people like Big Phil the “milko” had yelled abuse at me, accusing me of unwholesome practices or habits. Why? I had done nothing to him, other than exist, other than make a little money for myself. Women did not do such things, of course. We ( just barely) had the vote, but we did not have the right to live without a man. It was, as Phil would say, “unnatural”. That was fine with me. I would far rather have such views presented to my face than be part of the bitter webs of nastiness back home. I could tell Phil, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Phil, but there’s not much I want to do about it.” And if I then offered to buy him a beer at the Commercial Hotel, he’d laugh, shake his head in disbelief, call me a “mad bloody cow”, but be quite happy to have a drink with me.
So, I decided, I could probably rule out Big Phil as a suspect in whatever was going on. Someone in the area had such a loathing of me that he — or she, I supposed — was resorting to demonology as a means of attack, of all things. It seemed rather an elaborate, irrational, even a rather silly, response. Why not just have it out with me? I was susceptible to a reasoned argument. True, I would not leave this town if I could help it. Who hated me so much that the only answer was to summon a demon — for God’s sake! — to kill me? Why not just do it themselves? The visions Julia described did not sound to me like those of an ordinary human attacker. Such an attacker would have trouble with the locks on the house; would make some sort of noise in the course of moving through the house because many of the floorboards creaked; and, unless they had a copy of the architect’s drawings from the last century, they would have more trouble locating my bedroom than the figure in Julia’s visions. Could it be someone who knew me and knew the house so well that such considerations might not apply? Could a knowledgeable attacker steal through the house without stepping on certain boards? Perhaps also armed with a key? But who would that include? My servants, certainly. Gordon, of course, who had been here many times over the past decade — which made little sense.
Elves? It seemed hard to imagine such twilight, fey creatures being able to put together such an efficient raid. And again, why me? Though there you could also ask, Why not me? It was something that gnawed at me, in the middle of the night, when I had trouble sleeping.
The elves here in Australia, gravely etiolated, more twilight than sunlight, were our fault. We British had brought them with us, a kind of supernatural, cultural shadow of our own presence: where we went across the world, they came along, smuggled in our dreams, myths, fears, and darkest imaginings, and they came despite all our best efforts to prevent it. But how do you prevent your own shadow from coming with you? This harsh land of dazzling sunlight was hostile to them. To the extent that they intersected with our plane of reality at all, they were drawn to trees and forests, but forests here in Australia lacked some essential quality found in abundance back home. Or perhaps there was too much supernatural competition from the Aboriginal Dreamtime beings said to fill the land. This land was killing them. They barely existed as refugees, creatures stranded, washed ashore and unwelcome. But they were our fault. And they were waiting for us to leave and go home, so they could go home with us. I feared this would never happen, and, quietly, late at night in my more disturbing dreams, I grieved for them.
It was hard to entirely rule out a band of hostile elves. They were known to employ an ancient form of magic, drawn across the endless oceans from home, so it was possible that they might feel so aggrieved that resorting to some kind of demonology seemed to them like a good idea. But it was hard to believe that creatures so orthogonal to this reality could be so offended by the likes of me, a widowed writer of scientific romances living in a small country town, that they would mount such a campaign against me. Then again, I thought, maybe it was not about me, as such. Could the remaining elven population, barely connected to this world but determined to hold on to what they had, be intent on destroying more than merely myself? Could they be out to destroy the entire town? Could they be so desperate to return to Britain that they would drive us out of Australia? Certainly, I knew, Aboriginal people, when asked, reported that the elves’ presence in the world made them sick, and scared. They wanted the elves dispatched even more than we “whitefellas”. It was only too easy to imagine the elves feeling so cornered that they would resort to desperate measures.
All things considered, the real question one would have to ask would be: What had taken them so long?
7
I lay awake all night; at one point, while pacing in front of the bed, I heard movement in the hall outside. I jumped, startled, and could not suppress the thought, Already?
Then I heard floorboards creak, a muttering, and then someone bumped into a wall next to my bedroom door, and I heard Julia’s voice, “Oh bother!”
I let her in. She looked me up and down, then looked over at the tangled bedclothes. “You, too?”
We went downstairs to the kitchen. I made hot cocoa. The kitchen was full of the aromas of the evening meal; it was comforting, in a way, like a reminder of the simple, ordinary things going on in the world.
We sat and sipped quietly. It was a cold night. Rain was expected.
Julia held her cup before her in both hands. Over the rim, she said, “Rather a momentous evening.”
“I hope the whole hypnosis business didn’t disturb you — ”
“Oh not at all!” she said, smiling quickly. “I’m quite used to the trance state and all that. How do you think I manage my visits to the deadworld, I mean … ” She saw the look on my face at the mention of that word, and she trailed off. “Well,” she said, “it was quite fine. No trouble. I’m just sorry I couldn’t provide better information.”
I told her it was all right. Some information was better than none, at least in this context. Better to know something was going on. She said, “I could go under again, if that would help? Mr Duncombe could — ”
“I suspect Gordon would be willing, if I were to ask him, but I do not think it would be wise. Next time, we might inadvertently arouse the attentions of
whatever is going on in that cellar.”
She nodded, looking grim. “There was no chance I was getting to sleep tonight.”
I watched her. She was circling a middle finger around the gold rim of her porcelain cup; I could hear the tiniest squeak of sound, despite the wind outside battering at the rustling gum trees. She said, “I rather fear that things got stirred up anyway, Ruth, dear.”
“Oh?”
“I feel things whirling around inside my head. Since waking after Mr Duncombe’s procedure, I’ve not felt at all ‘right,’ if that makes sense. Like water and sand, usually calm, water at the top, sand at the bottom, but now it all feels like a busy sort of mud, if … ”
I blinked, thinking about Julia’s striking image. “Yes, quite. Has this sort of feeling happened to you on other occasions when you have had access to the ‘other bits’ of reality?”
She nodded, putting her cup down carefully on its saucer. “Indeed. It often takes me a day or two for everything to settle again.”
“And this has come about entirely as a consequence of Gordon’s hypnosis?”
She looked alarmed for a moment, realising. “No, dear. Not entirely. Something has not felt quite right since my arrival here. Like an off-key musical note only I could hear, ringing all through the town. I had scarcely even been aware of it, until tonight. That’s when I noticed it. And, lying in bed, tossing and turning, at first I thought it was simply the unfamiliar bed, the strange sounds of the house settling, the way the very air smells different in this country, but it soon occurred to me that it wasn’t any such thing. Or, that is, all those things were there, but they were not what was disturbing me. That was when I noticed — as strange as this must sound to the scientist in you — the disturbances.”
“Intriguing,” I murmured. “It might be worth determining if this disturbance you feel is constant throughout the area, or if it grows more or less intense in certain places. How would you feel about that?”
“If it would help sort out what’s going on, I would be all for it! Do you think Mr Duncombe might be interested in coming along?” Here she smiled a little slyly, looking as if she hoped I would not notice.
I suppressed a smile. “Gordon made an impression on you, Julia?”
She looked pointedly at her cup. “I say, another cocoa would go down well!”
I set about organising it. “You do realise,” I said as I warmed the milk at the range, “Gordon has very little money, and his house is nothing at all on the scale you are used to.”
She looked surprised, even a little shocked. “Ruth, my dear, I am baffled by this line of conversation. How’s the cocoa coming along?”
“He’s also,” I said, “setting about automating as much of his life as possible.”
“You said he invents machines?”
“Yes. Only, he doesn’t invent just one machine at a time and then move to the next one. He invents several at once, moving about his projects as inspiration strikes. Then there are his many dogs … ”
“I love dogs, dear!”
“He has twelve dogs, and they have the run of his property, including the house, and the bedroom.”
“The bedroom, you say?”
I said nothing and presented her fresh cocoa. “I wonder if Murray’s got any decent biscuits hiding in the pantry … ”
When I returned with a glass jar containing several ginger-snaps, I caught her looking, for a moment, as if trying to decide if multiple friendly dogs in the bed was something she could or could not abide. She was grateful for the biscuits, and quickly took to dunking them.
We talked about other, ordinary things for a while. Julia told further stories of remote relations and their endless intrigues. I sighed discreetly and sipped my cocoa.
Then, she said, “It must be terribly late. How will we get up for Mass tomorrow?”
I stopped, biscuit dunked and dripping on the polished karri table. A shot of cold ripped through me. I recovered swiftly, and hoped Julia had not noticed. “Mass, Julia? Oh, well … ”
“We shall need toothpicks to lever our eyelids open!” she said, smiling.
“Yes,” I said, feeling growing awkwardness. “Julia, did I tell you about my current novel?”
“Yes, of course you did. The poor chap trying to sort out the infinite threads of the universe, and all that. I’m sure you can work it all out.”
I went to elaborate, hoping to divert her, but she went on. “So tell me, dear,” she said, “what’s the problem with Mass tomorrow? Hmm?”
“Problem?” I said, trying to smile behind my cup.
“You look as though you received a dead fish in the daily post. What’s wrong?”
I sighed. “Ah.” Might as well explain. “It’s rather a long story, Julia. Very boring.”
“I don’t feel the slightest bit sleepy. Do you?”
I did not. Damn. “You will think this very silly, I’m sure.”
“You were always devout in your observances back home. Are things not done quite the same way here? I must say, that would not at all surprise me, considering everything. I feel certain the flies alone would drive everyone to sin, if nothing else!”
“The local priest, Father William — he and I have had something of a falling out, one might say.”
“Indeed?”
I took several breaths, trying to work out the best way to explain.
The nub of the matter was that I was, even before the War, very much against war. When I lost my husband to the organised, mechanised slaughter of the Great War, my opposition to war, and to the glorification of it, intensified. One might say I burned white-hot with my hatred of war, and of that particular war.
Then I moved out here to Australia. I had, as Aunt Julia said, always been a devout Christian back home in England. So once I was settled here in Pelican River, I set about finding a local church at which to attend Mass, and found one right here, run by the elderly Father William. Let me say, as simply as possible, that he and I did not see eye to eye — on anything, from the start. On our first meeting, over ten years ago, I noticed that when he laid eyes on me, and my appearance, for the first time, he visibly paled. When I asked about service times, he gave me the schedule with the greatest reluctance, as if hopeful, perhaps, that I might go elsewhere. Even with a simple question–reply situation such as this — “When are your services?”, “Everything is laid out in this leaflet we’ve prepared.” — there was tension and hostility. He peered at me as if I were a fly that had the misfortune to land in his much-too-weak cup of milky tea. He refused to make eye contact with me throughout the entire encounter. You could see his nostrils flaring; and it was impossible not to notice the rate of his respiration (astonishing bad breath, too, it must be said, which he tried to moderate with peppermint humbugs) increased sharply every time he took in my appearance. It was all he could do to get rid of me. He did ask me if my husband would be attending with me. I said no. He pointed out that I wore a wedding band. I explained that my husband was killed in the War. “I see,” he said, rather than anything soothing or compassionate. “So you’re in mourning, then?” he said, indicating, with the slightest gesture and tilt of his head, at my clothing. I gathered what he was trying to suggest — what he was trying to sort out in his own head — and said, “Yes, I am indeed still in mourning. But I wear what I wear because it’s comfortable and I like it.”
I do despise a man who refuses to make eye contact with a woman when she’s speaking to him. Who refuses even to shake my hand. Who, even as we are engaged in conversation, is attempting to ease me down the aisle towards the entrance, as if I’m a foul contagion he must eradicate from the premises. Who asks me for details about my late husband’s service during the War, and when I say my husband worked for the War Office, he then has the temerity — the gall! — to inquire how then might a man working in an office find himself killed during the War, and, I am afraid to say, I slapped the swine. “How dare you!” I said, and stalked out of the dark church and int
o the warmth and light before he could say a word. At that moment, vibrating with fury, I could have killed him with my bare hands. As it was, I hit him so hard he almost toppled over, but he managed to grab a pew as he spun. He came to the door, and shouted after me, forbidding me from attending his church for Mass. Forbidding me! In this day and age. As if it were the previous century. He had implied that Antony was a coward for not being a regular soldier serving in the Army. I could never forgive Father William for that. If he came to me on bended knee, weeping and full of remorse, I could never forgive such a suggestion.
But that was not why I slapped him that day. I slapped him because I, too, had wondered exactly how someone working as a civil servant in the War Office could find himself killed in the middle of the Somme. The telegram the Office sent informing me of Antony’s death did not say. It said only that he had died in the course of carrying out his duty to King and Country. That he had died an honourable death. I had to write letters, many letters, to the War Office in order to find out what happened, and this was all I had managed to extract from them: that he, a civil servant, had been in the Somme that day, “on assignment”, during an enemy artillery barrage. I wrote and asked if he had been delivering a written order, perhaps? They would not say. They would not answer any more of my letters. I kept sending them, and demanding to know what had happened to him, and how he had died. But my letters were met only with cold silence. On two occasions, walking through the village near the Black estate, I could have sworn I saw a man following me. On one occasion, while walking through the garden at home, I saw a nondescript brown truck, near the gates, which had been sitting there for some time. I asked Rutherford to go and ask the occupants if they needed anything. The truck left before he reached them.
Julia said, “So did you try to make it up with Father William?”
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