Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Her Uncle Robert’s death had given Naine the means for this venture. She had only slightly known him, a stiff memory of a red-brown August man handing her a lolly when she was five, or sitting on a train with the rest of the family when she was about thirteen, staring out of the window, looking sad at a bereavement.

  The money was a surprise. Evidently he had had no one else he wanted to give it to.

  The night of the day when she learned about her legacy there was a party to launch the book Naine had been illustrating. She had not meant to go, but, keyed up by such sudden fortune, had after all put on a red dress, and taken a taxi to the wine bar. She was high before she even entered, and five white wines completed her elevation. So, in that way, Uncle Robert’s bequest was also responsible for what happened next.

  At twenty-seven, Naine had slept with only two men. One had been her boyfriend at twenty-one, taken her virginity, stayed her lover for two years. The second was a relationship she had formed in Sweden for one month. In fact, they had slept together more regularly, almost every night, where with the first man she had only gone to bed with him once or twice a week, so reticent had been their competing schedules. In neither case had Naine felt very much, beyond a slight embarrassment and desire for the act to be satisfactorily over, like a test. She had read enough to pretend, she thought adequately, although her first lover had sadly said, as he left her for ever to go to Leeds, ‘You’re such a cool one.’ The Swede had apparently believed her sobs and cries. She knew, but only from masturbation, that orgasm existed. She had a strange, infallible fantasy which always worked for her when alone, although never when with a man. She imagined lying in a darkened room, her eyes shut, and that some presence stole towards her. She never knew what it was, but as it came closer and closer, so did she, until, at the expected first touch, climax swept through her end to end.

  At the party was a handsome brash young man, who wanted to take Naine to dinner. Drunk, elevated, she accepted. They ended up at his flat in Fulham, and here she allowed him to have sex with her, rewarding his varied and enthusiastic scenario with the usual false sobs and low cries. Perhaps he did not believe in them, or was only a creature of one night, for she never heard from him or saw him again. This was no loss.

  However, six weeks later, she decided she had better see a doctor. In the past her methods of contraception had been irregular, and nothing had ever occurred. It seemed to her, nonsensically but instinctively, that her lack of participation in the act removed any chance of pregnancy. This time, though, the spell had not worked.

  Abortions were just legally coming into regular use. For a moment Naine considered having one. But, while believing solidly in any woman’s right to have an unwanted foetus removed from her womb, Naine found she did not like the idea when applied to her own body.

  Gradually, over the next month, she discovered that she began to think intensely about what was inside her, not as a thing, but as a child. She found herself speaking to it, silently, or even aloud. Sometimes she was even tempted to sing it songs and rhymes, especially those she had liked when small - ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’, and ‘Ride a Cockhorse to Banbury Cross’. Absurd. Innocent. She was amused and tolerant of herself.

  Presently she was sure that the new life belonged to her, or at least that she was its sponsor. With this in mind, she set about finding a house in the country where the child might be brought up away from the raucous city of its conception. The house by the lane looked so pretty at once, the cow parsley and docks standing high, the sunlight drifting on a pink rose classically at the door. When she learned there was the new hospital only two miles away in Spaleby, and besides, a telephone point in the bedroom for the pre-ordained four-in-the-morning call for an ambulance, Naine took the house. And as she stepped, its owner, in over the threshold, a wave of delight enveloped her, like the clear, spotted sunshine through the leaves.

  * * * *

  As Naine walked up to the bus-stop by the main road, she was thinking about what a friend had said to her over the phone, the previous night. ‘You talk as if it didn’t have a father.’ This had come to Naine only hours afterwards. That is, its import. For it was true. Biology aside, the child was solely hers, and already Naine had begun to speak of it as feminine.

  She realised friends had called her less and less, during the fortnight she had been here. In the beginning their main interest had seemed to be if she was feeling ‘horribly’ ill - she never was. Also how she had ‘covered’ herself. Naine had put on her dead mother’s wedding ring, which was a little loose, and given the impression she and a husband were separated. Once the friends knew she was neither constantly spewing nor being witch-hunted as a wanton, they drew off. Really, were they her friends anyway? She had always tended to be solitary, and in London had gone out perhaps one night in thirty, and that probably reluctantly. She enjoyed her work, music, reading, even simply sitting in front of the TV, thinking about other things.

  The bus-stop had so far been deserted when Naine twice came to it about three, for the 3:15 bus to Spaleby. Today, in time for the 1:15 bus, she saw a woman was already waiting there. She was quite an ordinary woman, bundled in a shabby coat, maybe sixty, cheerful and nosy. She turned at once to Naine.

  ‘Hello, dear. You’ve timed it just right.’

  Naine smiled. She wondered if the woman could see the child, faintly curved under the loose cotton dress. The bulge was very small.

  ‘You’re in Number 23, aren’t you?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Oh...yes I am.’

  ‘Thought so. Yes. I saw you the other day, hanging your washing out, as I were going down the lane.’

  Naine had a vague recollection of occasional travellers using the lane, on foot, between the stands of juicy plants and overhanging trees. Either they were going to the estate, or climbing over the stile, making off across the land in the opposite direction, where there were three farms, and what was still locally termed the Big House, a small, derelict and woebegone manor.

  ‘Miss your hubby, I expect,’ said the woman.

  Naine smiled once more. Of course she did, normal woman that she was; yes.

  ‘Never mind. Like a lot of the women when I was a girl. The men had to go to Spaleby, didn’t come back except on the Sunday. There was houses all up the lane then. Twenty-seven in all, there was. Knocked down. There’s the pity. Just Number 23 left. And then modernised. My, I can remember when there wasn’t even running water at 23. But you’ll have all the mod cons now, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘I expect you’ve done a thing or two to the house. I shouldn’t wonder if you have.’

  Naine sensed distinctly the nosy cheerful woman would love to come in and look at Number 23, and she, Naine, would now have to be on guard when the doorbell rang.

  ‘I haven’t done much.’

  ‘Just wait till hubby gets home. Shelves and I don’t know what-all.’

  Naine smiled, smiled, and wished the bus would arrive. But she would anticipate Naine would sit with her, no doubt. Some excuse would have to be found. Or the guts to be rude and simply choose another seat.

  Two cars went by, going too fast, were gone.

  ‘Now the lane used to go right through to the village, in them days. There wasn’t no high road here, neither. You used to hear the girls mornings, going out at four on the dot, to get to the Big House. Those that didn’t live in. But the Missus didn’t encourage it. She was that strict. Had to be. Then, there was always old Alice Barterlowe.’ The woman gave a sharp, sniggering laugh. It was an awful laugh, somehow obscene. And her eyes glittered with malice. Did Naine imagine it - she tried to decide afterwards - those eyes glittering on her belly as the laugh died down. At the time Naine felt compelled to say, ‘Alice Barterlowe? Who was that?’ It was less the cowardly compulsion to be polite than a desire to clear the laugh from the air.

  ‘Who was she? Well that’s funny, dear. She was a real character hereabouts. When I was a nippe
r that were. A real character, old Alice.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Oh my. She kep’ herself to herself, did old Alice. But everyone knew her. Dressed like a man; an old labouring man, and rode astride. But no one said a word. You could hear her, coming down that lane, always at midnight. That was her hour. The hoofs on the lane, and you didn’t look out. There goes Alice, my sister said once, when we’d been woke up, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she shouldn’t have said it. Nor she shouldn’t. No one was meant to know, you see. But handy for some.’

  This sinister and illogical dialogue ended. The woman closed her mouth as tight as if zipped. And, before Naine could question her further - or not, perhaps - the green bus came chugging along the road.

  * * * *

  ‘Old Alice Barterlowe. Oh my goodness yes. I can remember my gran telling me about her. If it was true.’

  It was five days later, and the chatty girl in the village shop was helping Naine load her bag with one loaf, one cabbage, four apples and a pound of sausages.

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Oh, an old les. But open about it as you like. She had a lady-friend lived with her. But she died. Alice used to dress up just like the men, and she rode this old mare. Couldn’t miss her, gran said, but then you didn’t often see her. You heard her go by.’

  ‘At midnight.’

  ‘Midnight, that’s it.’

  ‘Why? Where was she going?’

  ‘To see to the girls.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Girls up the duff like.’

  ‘You mean...you mean pregnant?’

  ‘She was an abortionist, was Alice.’

  Naine had only felt sick once, a week after she had moved in. Sitting with her feet up for half an hour had taken it right off. Now she felt as if someone was trying to push her stomach up through her mouth. She retched silently, as the chatty girl, missing it, rummaged through her till.

  I will not be sick.

  I won’t.

  The nausea sank down like an angry sea, leaving her pale as the now hideous, unforgivable slab of cheese on the counter.

  ‘Here you are. Three pound change. Yes, old Alice, and that old horse. Half dead it looked, said my gran, but went on for years. And old les Alice was filthy. And this dirty old bag slung on the saddle. But she kept her hands clean as a whistle. And her stuff. There wasn’t one girl she seen to come to harm.’

  ‘You mean - it didn’t work.’

  ‘Oh it worked. It worked all right. They all got rid of them as wanted to, that Alice saw to. She was reliable. And not one of them got sick. A clean healthy miscarriage. Though my gran said, not one ever got in the family way after. Not even if she could by then. Not once Alice had seen to her.’

  On the homeward shady path between the hedges and fields, Naine went to the side and threw up easily and quickly amongst the clover. It was the sausages, she thought, and getting in, threw them away, dousing the bin after with TCP.

  * * * *

  Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,

  To see a fine lady upon a white horse—

  The rhyme went round in Naine’s head as she lay sleepily waking at five in the summer morning. The light had come, and patched beautifully through her beautiful butterfly-white curtains. On a white horse, on a white horse—

  And something sour was sitting waiting, invisible, unknowable, not really there.

  Old Alice Barterlowe.

  Well, she had done some good, surely. Poor little village girls in the days before the Pill, led on by men who wouldn’t marry them, and the poor scullery maids seduced at the Big House by some snobby male relative of the strict Missus’. What choice did they have but those clean strong probing fingers, the shrill hot-cold pain, the flush of blood—

  Naine sat up. Don’t think of it.

  Ride a cock-horse, clip clop. Clip clop.

  And poor old Alice, laughed at and feared, an ugly old lesbian whose lover had died. Poor old Alice, whose abortions always worked. Riding astride her ruinous old mare. Down the lane. Midnight. Clip clop. Clip clop.

  Stop it.

  ‘I’ll get up, and we’ll have some tea,’ said Naine aloud to her daughter, curled soft and safe within her.

  But in the end she could not drink the tea and threw it away. A black cloud hung over the fields, and rain fell like galloping.

  * * * *

  When Naine phoned her friends now, they could never stay very long. One had a complex dinner on and guests coming. One had to meet a boyfriend. One had an ear infection and talking on the phone made her dizzy. They all said Naine sounded tired. Was there a sort of glee in their voices? Serve her right. Not like them. If she wanted to get pregnant and make herself ill and mess up her life—

  Naine sat in the rocker, rocking gently, talking and singing to her child. As she did so she ran her hands over and over along the hard small swelling. I feel like a smooth, ripening melon.

  ‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear daughter, dear daughter...’

  Naine, dozing. The sun so warm. The smell of honeysuckle. Sounds of bees. The funny nursery rhyme tapping at the brain’s back, clip clop, clip clop.

  * * * *

  Naine was dreaming. She was on the Tube in London, and it was terribly hot, and the train kept stopping, there in the dark tunnels. Everyone complained, and a man with a newspaper kept saying, ‘It’s a fly. A fly’s got in.’

  Naine knew she was going to be terribly late, although she was not sure for what, and this made it much worse. If only the train would come into the station, then she might have time to recollect.

  ‘I tell you there’s a fly!’ the man shouted in her face. ‘Then do it up,’ said Naine, arrogantly.

  She woke, her heart racing, sweat streaming down her, soaking her cotton nightdress.

  Thank God it was over, and she was here, and everything was all right. Naine sat up, and pushed her pillows into a mound she could lean against.

  Through the cool white curtains, a white half-moon was silkily shining. A soft rustle came from the trees as the lightest of calm night breezes passed over and over, visiting the leaves.

  Naine reflected, as one sometimes does, on the power of the silliest dreams to cause panic. On its Freudian symbols - tunnels, trains, flies.

  She stroked her belly. ‘Did I disturb you, darling? It’s all right now.’ She drank some water, and softly sang, without thinking, what was tapping there in her brain, ‘Clip clop, clip clop. Clip clop, clip clop. Here comes the abortionist’s horse.’’ Then she was rigid. ‘Oh Christ.’ She got out of bed and stood in the middle of the floor. ‘Christ, Christ.’

  And then she was turning her head. It was midnight. She could see the clock. She had woken at just the proper hour. Alice Barterlowe’s hour.

  Clip clop, clip clop...

  The lane, but for the breeze, was utterly silent. Up on the main road, came a gasp of speed as one of the rare nocturnal cars spun by. Across the fields, sometimes, an owl might call. But not tonight. Tonight there was no true sound at all. And certainly not -that sound.

  All she had to do now, like a scared child, was to be brave enough to go to the window, pull back the curtain a little, and look out. There would be nothing there. Nothing at all.

  It took her some minutes to be brave enough. Then, as she pulled back the curtain, she felt a hot-cold stinging pass all through her, like an electric shock. But it was only her stupid and irrational night-fear. Nothing at all was in the lane, as she had known nothing at all would be. Only the fronds of growing things, ragged and prehistoric under the moon, and the tall trees clung with shadows.

  Past all the houses Alice had ridden on the slow old wreck of the horse, down the lane, and through the village. To a particular cottage, to a hidden room. In the dark, the relentless hands, the muffled cries, the sobs. And later, the black gushing away that had been a life.

  Why did she do it? To get back at men? Was it only her compassion for her own beleaguered sex, in
those days when women were more inferior than, supposedly, during the days of Naine?

  Go away, Alice. Your time is over.

  It was so silent, in the lane.

  Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop, clip clop.

  Here comes...

  Naine went downstairs to the bathroom. She felt better after she had been sick. She took a jug of water and her portable radio back upstairs. A night station played her the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and even an aria by Puccini, until she fell asleep, curled tight, holding her child to her, hard, against the filmy night.

  * * * *

  The doctor in Spaleby was pleased with Naine. He told her she was doing wonderfully, but seemed a bit tired. She must remember not to do too much. When they were seated again, he said, sympathetically, ‘I suppose there isn’t any chance of that husband of yours turning up?’