Shadows

by Thorne Moore

  I put a hand over her mouth. ‘No the hall roof isn’t on, but the oak for the beams has come, the Baxters are no trouble, and I know all about Peter. He’s here.’

  ‘What, here? At Llys y Garn? Oh darling, that’s wonderful! No, really. Oh I’m so glad. Isn’t that good news, Mike?’

  Michael gave me a quizzical smile. ‘Is it good news?’

  ‘He’s just visiting. Actually I’ve got some rather more important news for you.’

  Sylvia gazed brightly at me.

  ‘Al’s started work in the hall, and they’ve found a concealed priest hole.’

  Sylvia’s mouth gathered to a perfect O. ‘How exciting!’

  ‘Interesting,’ agreed Michael.

  ‘And unfortunately, they’ve found human remains inside.’

  In an instant, just as I had suspected, Sylvia’s excitement turned to horror. ‘Oh no, how awful. Oh that’s horrible.’

  ‘Just some very old bones, Sylvia. Nothing too ghastly. They’ll be taken away very soon, for examination, and then Al can get on with the work.’

  ‘But bones! Oh Kate.’

  ‘Now, now.’ Michael led her into the kitchen, while I prepared to deal with a prolonged session of weeping hysteria, by administering hot tea, spirits and words of reassurance. But Sylvia managed to confound me. I’d barely switched the kettle on when she grabbed my arm.

  ‘Oh Kate!’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘No but Kate, just think. Bones in a priest hole! What a story! Won’t it be just perfect publicity!’

  I stared at her, as Michael rolled his eyes and winced. Then for the first time that day, I laughed.

  Chapter 11

  Now that the gods of the hearth had returned to the house, all was alive and bubbling. Green bones, even a green skull, were too impersonal for Sylvia to feel real distress. She inspected them, with exclamations of comfortable horror, and invited the Baxters from the Lodge to come and see, which they did, armed with cameras, until official visitors arrived to bustle them out.

  Michael stayed with Al to answer questions and witness, while our unsuspected lodger was dealt with, leaving me free to put as much distance as I could between myself and the horror.

  ‘Fancy a walk?’ I suggested.

  ‘You don’t want to hang around and keep an eye on things?’ Peter, who was already reinstalled as Sylvia’s golden boy, was clearly hoping to join the audience in the hall.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ I’d spent the night in nightmares about the man trapped in that vile, claustrophobic hole. The desperate, screaming emotions I’d already felt had been given concrete form and, now it was daylight, I wanted to be well away.

  And I needed to prise Peter away, before Sylvia had us up the aisle, renewing our vows. It wasn’t that I wanted to slam the door on his overtures. I just wasn’t ready to fling it wide open, either. Not yet.

  ‘You came for a talk, didn’t you, and the only place we’re going to manage it, with any privacy, is out there, so let’s walk. I’ll find you some boots. Come on, I’ll show you our Stonehenge.’

  As we set out, I heard another vehicle arriving, doors slamming. Soon, I trusted, the bones would be gone, but I could sense their sickening shadow creeping up behind me. I needed to be up on the hilltop, by my standing stones, and feel the clean, cold emptiness eating all my turmoil away.

  Peter trudged beside me. ‘So what about us then, Kate? How did it all go wrong?’

  ‘That’s an original opener.’

  ‘Sometimes the obvious is the best.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose I’m not the easiest person to live with.’

  ‘Which of us is?’

  ‘No, Peter. The correct response is “You were wonderful to live with, Kate.”’

  He laughed. ‘And you were. Wonderful. Just not necessarily easy.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I do appreciate the efforts you took to make allowances. Like pretending there was something wrong with the car so that we’d be late for Sarah’s wedding and I wouldn’t have to sit around in an old church—’

  ‘You knew I was lying? You did a good job of pretending to be exasperated.’

  ‘That’s what I’m good at, Peter. Pretending. I learned it so young, it’s become second nature. Sometimes I can’t help myself. It’s meant to protect me, but as often as not, it just ruins everything.’

  For once he didn’t jump in with a soothing platitude. We walked on.

  ‘Are old churches so very bad?’ he asked at last. ‘A bit spooky, maybe, but are they really riddled with ghostly agony?’

  ‘They’re riddled with graves, tombs, crypts. The dead. Which is fine if they really were dead when they were put there. How many people have been buried alive down the centuries?’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘If people had nothing to go on but pulse and a feather, I expect it was an easy mistake to make. Not so easy for the dying if they came round to find themselves suffocating in their own tomb.’

  ‘Jesus! You’ve put me off churches now. No wonder you won’t go in. And I suppose the guy in the priest’s hole went through just the same.’

  ‘Don’t! Please. We’re walking away from that.’

  ‘Ah. Is that what we’re doing? So you really have no idea—‘

  ‘No, I have no idea what he was doing in there.’ I’d sat through dinner and breakfast listening to Sylvia and Peter’s endless speculation, with only Michael’s occasional suggestion, that we should wait for a bit more evidence, to add a touch of sanity. I’d had enough of the subject.

  Peter hopped to avoid a puddle. ‘Sorry. But you did know something was there. Okay, you felt something there, because that’s what you do. That’s why you avoid churches, ruins, old houses. That’s why I can’t understand why you chose to come here. An old place like this, with enough creaks and groans to spook anyone into thinking they see ghosts—’

  ‘I have never claimed to see ghosts!’

  ‘You know what I mean. Your shadows. Don’t tell me Llys y Garn isn’t crawling with them. It must be. Look at it.’ We looked back on the muddle of chimneys, Victorian, Georgian, Elizabethan, neat brick, crumbling stone, buried in the woods. ‘Don’t tell me those bones are its only secret. Are there others?’

  I thought of that waft of fear in the servants’ attics. ‘No.’

  ‘No? Well, the bones are more than enough. So maybe you’ve come here to prove something.’

  ‘Very perceptive of you.’ I walked on.

  Peter followed. ‘And? Have you managed to convince yourself that it’s all a figment of your imagination?’

  ‘Oh that would be lovely, wouldn’t it?’ I glared at him. ‘Discovering that I’m just a delusional basket-case.’

  ‘Whoa! I’m not suggesting it. I was just wondering if that was what you wanted it to be.’

  ‘No, I’m not hoping I’m insane. I can’t stop feeling the things I feel, so I just want to learn to live with it. Look. Here’s our archaeological site. Excited?’ We’d reached the top fields. ‘All manner of treasures under these humps, apparently.’

  Peter leaned on the dry stone wall to look. ‘Serious archaeological theory, or local folklore?’

  ‘Serious archaeology. I told you, we have a professor who’s going to dig it up. Professor Ronald Pryce-Roberts, BSc, PhD, MIFA—’

  ‘RPR! Good God. Small world. I know Ronnie Pryce-Roberts!’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Dour guy, big nose, smells of moth balls. Yes, we met—where was it? Henry introduced us. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I’ve never met him before. Maybe you were with Gabrielle?’

  He winced, then relief lit his face. ‘No, I remember now. I was just with Phil. The conference on academic funding. I remember RPR. Totally out of place. Should have been in a solar-tope in Mesopotamia, directing native bearers.’

  ‘Well, this is his Mesopotamia for the summer. He was keen, this was cheap, and his sister lives round here. She’s on every committee and quango in the co
unty, which means that we’ll get permission for the camp, without having to resort to bribery.’

  ‘What are they’re expecting to find? More bodies?’

  ‘No idea.’ The thought didn’t disturb me. The bones of the quiet dead, buried under the wide sky, held no terror. They were just organic matter. ‘It’s “An Introduction to Excavation Techniques” for undergraduates and aspiring students. Probably hoping for a few bits of pottery as a bonus. Ask Mike. He actually listened when Ronnie explained it.’

  ‘You can’t sense anything?’

  ‘Out here in the open? Of course not. Come on.’

  We climbed onto the open moor. ‘Look, there are our stones. Be impressed, please.’

  ‘Not exactly Stonehenge,’ said Peter, as we reached the tumbled mass of Bedd y Blaidd. ‘But still, very nice.’

  We sat down on the springy turf, leaning against the upright stones, gazing out over the sweep and buckle of valley, forest and farmland, to the milky light of the distant sea.

  For Peter that was it. A bunch of rocks to lean against. For Al, it had been a place of mystical intensity – or mystical claptrap. For me, the stones held sanctuary, their calming silence a refuge. What I felt, the sense of passion earthed, was mine alone. I knew I was always going to be alone. No point in wishing otherwise.

  ‘So.’ Peter stretched, making himself comfortable. ‘How’s it going? Your one-to-one combat with the grim reaper.’

  I was jolted by his flippant tone. ‘My what?’

  ‘The thing that dogs you. Death.’ Realising that his attempt at rephrasing it only made it worse, he stopped, then he leaned forward, determined to finish the point. ‘I mean you feel death the way no one else can. Sorry, but there it is. It’s never going to leave us alone, is it? It’s our little problem.’

  I didn’t need psychic powers to know he was thinking about the baby. ‘My little problem.’ I pulled up a tuft of heather and began shredding it. ‘I’m the one who feels it.’

  Peter got up, took a few steps along the ridge, hands in pockets, eyes on the glinting horizon. Then he did an about turn and looked down at me. ‘That’s the point, Kate. You make it all yours. You won’t share. You shut everyone out, even me. Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the only way to survive. I did share with you, didn’t I?’ I pictured his face, the moment I’d told him the baby was dead, and I looked away. ‘I told you how weird I was, on our very first date. You thought it quite sexy back then.’

  ‘All right yes, no, not sexy. Interesting. But then you stopped talking about it.’

  ‘I stopped because it isn’t sexy, or interesting. It’s vile, and I realised you’d never be able to understand that.’ I stood up. ‘You really don’t want to share it, Peter. Believe me, you don’t want to be constantly enmeshed in death, every way you turn!’ I slipped past him, pained and angry, at him, at myself, at the whole of bloody life. Before he could pull me back, I charged on, slithering down the steep slope, slipping, almost tumbling into a sheltered cup among the rocks. I teetered on its brink, looking down.

  A dead sheep was lying there.

  Dead, rotting, eyeless, one limb torn off by scavengers.

  Why did it have to turn up at my feet?

  Because an irresistible force had brought me directly to it, because death was my shadow and I was never going to escape it.

  Death had been with us from the start, sealing our marriage and then sealing its fate. I’d been courting Peter when my mother died. She went into hospital for a heart operation. A potentially serious condition, but a supposedly routine procedure. I went with her, packing her nightgowns and slippers. I paced the corridor while they operated, worrying about her, but all the while, guiltily, thinking ‘I want to be with Peter.’ I was with her as she came round, groggy and smiling. ‘Successful,’ they said. ‘It all went very well.’

  And amidst my joy and relief, there had been the shame-faced satisfaction that with her on the mend, I’d soon be able to go to my man. She knew, of course, pretending to shoo me away. ‘Now off you go, to that Peter.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said, and meant it.

  But by the second day, she was stronger, more colour in her cheek, and when she said ‘Go on now. You’re not doing any good hanging round here,’ I kissed her and went.

  Peter was working in Southampton. It was two hundred miles away, but a quick visit couldn’t hurt. I phoned the hospital the next day and all was well, Peter was fun and life was good and I didn’t phone again.

  I didn’t phone again.

  I was ambling back up north, two days later, pausing at a craft shop in the Cotswolds, when I felt her confused panic, her urgent longing for me and then – nothing. A piece vanished from the jigsaw of my life. Between one breath and the next she’d gone.

  I dropped a vase I hadn’t even liked. £17.50. I threw them a twenty pound note and didn’t wait for the change. I drove north, blindly, flooring the accelerator, until a police car pulled me over. ‘I have to get home,’ I said. ‘My mother’s just died.’

  They calmed me down, then let me go. I drove more carefully then. Why rush? It was too late.

  Unexpected deterioration. Unforeseen complications. The hospital had tried to contact me but no one was sure where I was. I hadn’t left a number.

  They took me in to see her and say goodbye, as if the pallid, hollow thing under the white sheet was my mother. It wasn’t her. She was already gone. She’d gone, wanting me, while I was cradling a vase I didn’t like, in a shop I hadn’t needed to visit, and that was the only goodbye I had.

  Peter rushed to join me as soon as he heard. He hugged me while I sobbed, and when he said ‘Marry me,’ I held onto him and never wanted to let go.

  Nine years later, I told him our baby was dead, and the marriage was over. That was how it worked, death marking my every turn. Peter had lived with me, watched me, touched me, listened to my rare explanations, but he could never truly understand. No one could.

  I could demonstrate this to him.

  ‘You’ve seen our bones, you’ve seen our stones. Now, do you want to see a yurt?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do I want to see a yurt?’

  ‘Of course you do. And a round house. A genuine Celtic round house. Well, a genuine Nuclear Age round house, I should say. They’re building it in the woods.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’ I led him down in the direction of the Annwfyn camp.

  ‘We did have good times.’ Peter gave a wistful sigh as he followed.

  ‘I know we did.’

  ‘Couldn’t we—’

  ‘I’m still the same, Peter.’

  ‘Couldn’t we learn how to deal with that?’

  ‘How? I can’t share because I don’t dare. I’ve built a wall up round myself that keeps everyone out, even you. I know it’s wrong, I know I’m to blame, but it’s the way I am, and it’s no basis for a relationship. It can’t work.’

  ‘Learn to talk.’

  ‘How do I talk, Peter? I can use words, but they will never be enough for you or anyone to understand.’

  ‘So you won’t even try?’

  ‘All right.’ We were there, at the gloomy, overhung hollow, by the stagnant pools of foetid darkness. ‘I’ll talk. I’ll share. This place. I feel something here.’

  ‘You do? What?’ Peter scrambled down, edging round on the narrow path as if to protect me from unseen spectres. He stood, waiting for some monster to rise from the waters. But nothing rose. There was nothing to see except, bizarrely, an offering of petals and grain on a rock in the midst of the shadowy horror.

  ‘Something bad?’

  ‘Yes. Very bad.’ My voice was steady, however much my gut recoiled. ‘Resentment. Terror. Animal fury. A Spaghetti Junction of blaring emotions. There. I am talking about it. But all I have to share is words, because you can’t feel what I’m feeling, so you can’t really believe.’

  ‘Oh I believe!’ Peter pulled a loose branch from the undergrowth an
d began to poke the oily surface of the nearest black puddle.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The unearthing of bones in the hall was bad enough. Now here was my husband, prodding mud in search of more. ‘Leave it alone!’

  ‘I just want to see…’ The tip went down. And down. He let it go, and the branch slumped sideways into the glutinous mire. ‘I can believe something bad happened here, all right. Well, look at it. Someone fell in, or fought, or was pushed. They died. That makes perfect sense. There’s a body in there. They find bog bodies, don’t they? Ancient sacrificial victims. Is that it? Is that what happened?’

  ‘Don’t you get it? I don’t know! Is there a body in there? Yes, probably, a dozen. A hundred. I don’t know any more than you. I knew someone died horribly in the hall, but I didn’t know there’d be a body there. I can feel the emotions that came screaming out of people here. Death gave them escape, but what they felt is still here and when I’m here, I have to eat it, drink it, suffocate in it. So as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t an interesting puzzle, it’s a nauseating cancer. Can we get out of here now?’

  Peter stifled the question on his lips and held out his hand to lead me on, out of the dell. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. I know that when you get it, it totally messes you up. But I think you only make it worse for yourself by keeping it inside, putting on such an act of feeling nothing. If you just explained—’