‘I’ll hold,’ she tells the operator sharply. ‘I can’t put this phone down. It’s out there, not yards away, and there’s nobody here except me. I’ll hold on until somebody gets here.’ And she does just that. She grips so hard her hand is a claw, she clings for grim death.
Centuries go by while she waits for the police to arrive. Perhaps it was an animal. Oh my God, and she has mindlessly called the police, of course, it was an animal. What else would climb so soundlessly onto her woodshed roof and wait for her out there, and stare down so vacantly, so totally unblinkingly? The police will arrive and pour scorn on her terror; a Londoner come from up the line, making a fuss over some perfectly natural country occurrence.
Was it an animal? How can she tell? An eye is an eye, she would hardly have the presence of mind to stand there and sort through the possibilities, not in the state she is in, and how many glasses of wine has she had, and will the police smell it and decide she is just pissed?
‘Are you all right?’ calls the anxious voice on the phone, her lifeline.
‘Yes, I’m all right. Just so long as you stay there.’
‘Is there anyone I could call who could come and wait with you until we arrive?’
No, there is no-one. She can’t disturb Horace Horsefield in the middle of the night, he couldn’t possibly leave Nancy alone. Mrs Buckpit might come, Georgie supposes, but with such reluctance and bad temper she would be no use at all. Chad would enjoy refusing, and he would never allow Donna to help.
‘No,’ says Georgie in a pitiful voice. ‘There’s nobody. Only me.’ It sounds as if it’s her fault. As if she is unlovable, no friends, no relations. And as if she is one of those difficult neighbours everyone does their best to avoid.
‘Not even a neighbour?’ The operator will not give up and Georgie wants to shout, This is Wooton-Coney for Christ’s sake. There’s neighbours and there’s neighbours, and I am a stranger and unwelcome here.
Eventually the lights of a police car kiss the hem of her curtains. Georgie weeps with relief. ‘They’re here,’ she sobs to her staunch companion of the night. But not until she has let them in, not until the size of them and their sensibleness fills her living room dare she put the phone down, dare she face the click of being cut off.
The two policemen are both locals, both large and reassuring. She makes them tea. She sips her own with shaking hands. Only when they have finished their tea and she has described what happened in detail do they ask to see the woodshed. She cautiously takes the chain from her door and leads them outside. The woodshed light is still on.
‘Where exactly did you see this eye?’
She points up bravely. Of course it’s not there now.
‘But you heard nothing when you entered the shed? You think it was already in position?’
‘It must have been. There was only one small sound. That’s what made me look up. Without that I might have come and gone without noticing anything and he’d probably still be there now.’ Georgie shudders.
‘We’d better take a look now we’re here.’
So Georgie fetches her ladder and stands back and watches as one of the policemen climbs to the sloping roof. It’s not high. You have to duck to get through the woodshed door, it’s the only part of the roof which is tiled and if you don’t duck you could cut your head on the slates. The policeman shines his torch and shouts down, ‘Can’t see anything here.’ They poke about. They chat and look round while the rain damps their uniforms and their shoulders sparkle in the light from the door. Then they are back inside again, sitting by the fire, and the ruddy-faced of the two asks, ‘And what makes you think there was a man on your roof? Isn’t an animal more likely?’
Oh yes, she had known this was coming. ‘It wasn’t one of those tiny eyes. It wasn’t the eye of a rat, or a mouse.’
‘How about an owl?’ He’s taking notes. The other lights a cigarette and crosses his legs as if he’s at home. It’s pleasing to see him acting like this, she wants them to stay a while longer.
‘It wasn’t a round eye like an owl’s. It was more slanted than that, more human. That’s why I immediately assumed it must be a man.’
‘I dunno what a fox’s eye would look like from below, d’you, Wilf?’
‘Well,’ says the comfortably spreadeagled Wilf. ‘In car headlights they look red, don’t they? But God knows what they’d look like on a roof.’ He turns to Georgie. ‘What d’you think, Miss? Was it a fox’s eye?’
She is nonplussed. This is a ludicrous conversation. ‘I don’t know what a fox’s eye might look like, either.’
‘You see, Miss,’ and the, ruddy-faced man with button nose looks at her kindly and says, ‘frankly, it’s so improbable that an intruder would be there on your roof, not least in weather like this, just staring down silently with intent, it’s so unlikely that we have to discount it. Apart from which, if it was a man, once he’d been spotted he’d be off, wouldn’t he? He wasn’t to know that you’d hurry indoors, for all he knew you could have picked up a spade and attacked him. So you see, I think we’re going to have to discount that possibility, I’m afraid.’
‘I thought that’s what you’d say.’
Wilf says, ‘You disagree with our theory then?’
Georgie pushes at her wet hair frantically. ‘No, I can’t disagree. How can I disagree when you sound so plausible? I don’t know who that eye belonged to, and I admit it seems a bit unlikely that a man would stay there once he’d been seen…’
‘So, you see, you needn’t have been so frightened. I mean, what’s he after?’ asks Wilf, looking round with a speculative eye.
And then they enquire how long she’s been here and where she comes from, and Georgie is terrified something might jog their memories and they’ll realize they’ve heard of her before. Very aware of her boozy breath, she fears they have already decided she’s tipsy. But she’s sobered up pretty quickly. And she had not been drunk. She’s only had two glasses this evening. She tries too hard to sound totally sober, not the sort of neurotic to make up stories for attention on a dark night. A lonely woman who drinks too much. An unloved, unwanted woman with not enough on her mind.
She has a tussle with herself over whether to tell them about the figure, the doll, the make-up case, or the blood, but suspects that if she gets into that they are bound to dismiss her as one more nutter. But she longs to tell them, she longs to…
They are kindly men, friendly and sympathetic. They see how frightened Georgie is and they give her the time they can. They have no need to linger as long as they do and, of course, they cannot stay here all night, that is just impossible. But there is something so comforting about sitting here, chatting about this and that. Her fears do subside. She tells them some tales about Wooton-Coney and they join in with her laughter.
‘Oh yes, there’s some strange places round here. Strange folks, too, no doubt about it. Very incestuous, you see. You’re just going to have to make sure you fetch that last log in daylight,’ says the first cop over a second cup of tea. ‘Get that chain on the door early. In the dark it’s easy to imagine things. Everyone does it, especially when you’re on your own and there’s nobody to talk to.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if there had been anyone else here,’ says Georgie in a last bid to convince them. ‘I would still have been terrified. I would still have believed there was a man on my roof.’
But would she? Would she? She knows just how neurotic she is getting and she knows she drinks too much.
‘I tell you what,’ says Wilf on leaving. ‘Seeing as how you keep late hours, we pass along the top road most nights at about eleven thirty, so why don’t we pop in occasionally just to reassure you?’
‘Oh yes. Thank you.’ She wrings her hands in gratitude, ready to clutch at any straw. ‘That would be such a relief.’
But she imagines them in the safety of their car, raising their eyebrows as they drive away. She imagines one of them say to the other, ‘Good God, you certain
ly see ’em all round here. Take that one for a start. Several sandwiches short of a picnic, mark my words.’
TWENTY-ONE
OH DEAR. THE STUFF of a particular horror: impossible to communicate and the overriding fear that nobody is going to believe you. Oh yes, Georgie has been here before, but some devils you know and some you don’t, and some you refuse to recognize even when they plonk themselves right down in front of you.
Garlic will not help her now. But the crown of thorns is working well.
How she endured November Georgie will never know, it could be the fact that the Maces were coming, it gave her something positive to dwell on and plan for. She manages to make some sausage rolls and puts them in the freezer. She bakes the cake and sticks it in a tin. She cleans like a mad thing to keep germs at bay, germs, rampant and uncontrollable, and whatever other unseen force might threaten her. She thinks she might change her name and spends pleasant hours doodling around a suitable alternative—Emma, Jessica, Clara? Why not something a little less sensible—Willow, Rain, Anastasia? Will there be enough room in the cottage for her guests, even if Georgie gives up her bedroom? And where will she put the Christmas tree? She sends for her Christmas presents mail order and the postman stretches to pop the parcels in through the bedroom window. They’re not as exciting as they looked in the catalogue, in fact, she has chosen badly, and this is the penalty of ordering too early without being in the festive mood. These are worries she can just about cope with. On bonfire night she yearns for a sparkler as a protest against she doesn’t know what. With a sparkler in her hand she could sit in the darkened kitchen and write her name in the air in fire. But she doesn’t do that, and the long day passes, same as all the others.
Oh the sham of pretending to cope. It sits like a permanent ache in her head. She would wake up fresh in the morning, and then, with first consciousness, the headache would wake too, and from that time it stays all day. From that time the feeling of exhaustion begins, the buried conflict quickly draining off any energy accumulated in sleep. Everything seems to require so great an effort, letters, reading, cooking, any kind of concentration, and she just drifts from hour to hour.
If Georgie can thrust reality aside, just for an instant, she can feel full and tranquil and free. She can only do this by taking time back and pretending that Angie Hopkins lives, that she took immediate action, removed the child from her violent home and found her some kindly foster parents. Then she’d be back in London again with a life of bland contentment, never facing these devils of hers, unaware of their very existence.
There are occasions when she peers from her window into the gloomy weather outside and imagines she sees the figure again. It is always too far away to make out any details other than the fact that it’s padded and menacing, and mostly absolutely still. It disappears in the end, no matter how hard Georgie stares, one minute it’s there, the next it’s gone, veiled by the mists. Could it be Lot? He is certainly large enough, and has taken to going about muffled up to the eyeballs in a giant army-surplus anorak with the furred hood of an Eskimo, and sometimes a rubber cape over the top of all that. But Lot could never stand still for so long and, besides, the Buckpit brothers don’t move an inch without their tractor, and their guns are always over their shoulders. The figure does not carry a gun.
The ratlike Cramer is nowhere near large enough to create this sort of monumental impression and he is rarely around in the day, he leaves home first thing in the morning and comes home long after dark.
How about Horace? Horace is gigantic, but what would possess him to suddenly abandon his precious Nancy and lurk about in such hellish weather? And to what purpose? To put the fear of God into his solitary neighbour? Hardly the most efficient method. What if she failed to look out? How would he know he had been seen?
And what if it’s someone she doesn’t know, some angry stranger, someone to punish her for her crime?
Donna denies seeing anyone, so does the grim Mrs Buckpit after Georgie plucks up the courage to ask her. Her own imagination must be playing these sinister tricks.
This is no good. She has to start being firmer with herself. She locks and chains the door at teatime. She never ventures out in the dark. In the whole of the south-west Georgie’s hens must be the first to be penned up for the night, sometimes she pulls up their ramp and locks their little front door as early as three thirty. There is no effect on their laying, by now most are off-lay anyway.
Not only is it consistently wet, but it’s unbelievably cold. Just to slip outside for a moment is to be snapped in the teeth of a raw, burning wind. It sweeps through the valley, hell-bent on escape from the vast frozen wastes of open moorland over the hill and beyond. It might be straight from the arctic. It finds every nook and cranny, it roars down the chimney, seemingly thrilled to have found such a convenient route, and Georgie curses her spartan self for failing to install central heating. She smiles at the memory of her silly high-minded principles. ‘It’s far healthier. We’re such a pampered, lily-livered lot, no wonder we go round with colds all winter. There’s nothing wrong with open fires and wearing extra sweaters. People were fitter in the old days.’
Huh! What people?
Because after a certain temperature, struggling round in extra clothes makes not a hoot of difference.
Even Lola is reluctant to leave her fireside position. The ritual now involves thrusting the dog outside, slamming the door behind her and waiting five minutes before relenting. She is always waiting, whining to get back in. Not like the old Lola at all. Perhaps Georgie should knit her one of those poodle tartan coats. Perhaps she ought to take up knitting.
Yes, why not?
Seized with a new and positive hope she jumps in the car and battles her way through flooded roads and over broken branches. The little town, wind-battered and wet, is much quieter; there is an air of normality here, the rows of parked cars, the women with their shopping bags gossiping at the butcher’s. There is a reassuring queue at the post office. She buys a pattern and some wool. She will knit poor Donna a long, warm jumper. She chooses a cheerful emerald green. Home again ’cos there’s nowhere else, crashing through the mayhem, she sits and knits beside the fire, despite the redness of her hands, the harsh sheen which the cold puts on them, and wonders if she looks like Donna, drooped and raw and listless. She listens to the weather forecasts, but they ignore Dartmoor completely as if it is another world and anyone demented enough to live there deserves all they get, it’s hardly worth a mention. The forecasts offer little hope, and if Georgie’s cottage is stone cold what on earth must Donna’s feel like? The mind boggles. No wonder she visits so frequently and stays for so long, it cannot all be governed by her unfortunate schoolgirl passion.
All too soon she finishes the sweater and starts on a scarf to match. You see how hard she is trying? How determined she is? She will not abandon herself to despair, she will not allow her absurd mental state to take over. She can knit away madly like this, pass the hours until winter is over. OK it might be depressing, as are Donna’s visits, Donna, with whom she is making no progress. Their conversations rarely vary. Why can’t she move in with Georgie? Does Georgie realize how much she loves her? Not in a sexual way, of course, more of a mental fixation. Should she leave Chad or should she stay? What is this need to be mastered? She tells tales of a sad and lonely childhood and harbours desolate fears for the future. Sometimes she brings along her tapes and Georgie would be churlish to refuse to allow her to play them, so Donna sits with her crying songs, swaying sadly before the fire, a vacant look in her bright young eyes, reduced to a morbid state of trance.
All Georgie’s spare energy goes into trying to cheer the wretched girl up, and when that is over she sits and commiserates over her bright-green knitting. Quite drained. And when Donna eventually leaves it feels as if she’s been no real company at all.
But mercifully Donna has taken to Lola, and it seems that to sit and brush the honey-coloured spaniel gives Donna more comfort than Georg
ie ever could. Lola can understand anything.
Donna is with her on the deadly day when Georgie lets Lola out and the dog fails to return. Extraordinarily she fails to appear when Georgie opens the door, teeth gritted against the cold, less than five minutes later.
So the huddled Georgie flings the door wider, the cold rushes in on a wave, floods the kitchen and pours through the rest of the cottage, pushes open the unlatched door and gallops on up the stairs. Georgie, shouting desperately, shivers. ‘Lola! Lola!’ She shuts the door for a moment and waits, gathering strength for another assault. Again she yells at the top of her voice, ‘Lola! Lola!’
As Georgie edges her face out a fraction, it reddens, it burns. But nothing. No dog. No sign.
‘Damn and blast. Surely in this she hasn’t decided to chase a rabbit.’ Frozen stiff in those few short seconds, Georgie retreats to the comparative warmth of the sitting room. ‘Lola’s not there,’ she tells Donna. ‘I’ll wait a few moments and then I’ll have another try.’
But Donna, not up to emotional dramas, is quite the wrong person to have around in an emergency such as this. She pales, instantly fearing the worst. ‘Where’s she gone then?’
Georgie tries to sound reassuring. ‘Probably after some scent. Rabbits. It can only be rabbits, nothing else would keep Lola out in this.’
‘But she’s never done this before,’ cries Donna with her drawn face and her miserable eyes, worse than normal somehow, because now her concerns are for Lola.
‘She’ll be back in a minute.’ But the minutes pass so blasted slowly. She goes to the door half a dozen times, shouts and whistles, but there’s still no sign. She fetches her coat, scarf, gloves and hat. ‘I’ll have to go after her,’ says Georgie eventually, not relishing the prospect, but far more anxious than she is showing.
Unhallowed Ground Page 21
