Clouds among the Stars

by Clayton, Victoria

  While Cordelia entertained her enthralled host and the rest of the table, who were perhaps less enchanted, with a recital of the entire plot of what was an extremely long film, I began to compose my article for the Brixton Mercury. I could make much of the arm. But should I save up the Lady of the Moat for another time? And what about the face I thought I had seen in the closet mirror? As I remembered it I could not repress a shudder of revulsion, though I had several times given myself a stern talking-to about being a credulous ass. Then I remembered what had taken place afterwards. Anger with Max and with myself were about equal. No, I would not write about the events of that night until I could think about it calmly.

  ‘I liked the bit where that man was chopped up by the chariot wheels best,’ said Annabel. ‘I’d like to race in the Circus Maximus. I’d easily win.’

  ‘I suppose it would be hypocritical of me to urge you to be true to your sex and moderate your bloodthirsty ways,’ said Archie.

  ‘She isn’t so tough, really,’ said Jonno, with typical brotherly unkindness. ‘Don’t you remember, Annabel, when I took you to the midsummer fair in Bunton last year and you insisted on going on the Dodgems on your own. Those boys from the comp jumped on your car and pulled your plaits and teased you until you cried. I had to rescue you and you blubbed like a baby just because they’d called you a posh bitch.’

  Annabel flung down her knife and fork. ‘I’m going to make you sorry you ever lived, Jonno Pye. I’m going to get Dad’s gun.’ She stormed out.

  ‘What did I say?’ Jonno looked amazed.

  ‘Perhaps someone should go after her,’ I said.

  Because Cordelia was the youngest of a large family she was inured to teasing and always gave as good as she got. Poor Annabel was sensitive and did not know how to protect herself. She had no female role models except Maggie, whom she had been taught to despise. This, I suspected, explained her tearaway act. It was a desperate attempt to convince herself and others that she was as good as a boy.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Archie. ‘If you had any idea how draining it is to be creative!’

  Collectively we turned our eyes to Jonno.

  ‘All right.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll give her a pi-jaw and tell her not to be such a little silly. Luckily all the guns in this house are so rusty they wouldn’t work even if there were any cartridges. But I’m such a black sheep myself, I’m not really in a position to preach.’

  ‘Very true!’ Miss Tipple lifted her chin from her plate to glower at him.

  Sir Oswald, oblivious of what was going on around him, was massaging the pepper-pot vigorously and gazing at Cordelia as she continued to talk.

  A new candidate for my column presented herself late that same night. In fact, if my stay at Pye Place did not make me master of my trade, there was no hope for me. Mrs Whale and I were making quick work of tidying the kitchen. Except for Maggie, Sir Oswald, Miss Tipple and Mrs Whale, the house party had enjoyed an outing to the Bunton Hippodrome, with fish and chips afterwards. Bouncer and Blitzen lay like pulsating balloons in their baskets with their night-time bones. Everyone else had gone to bed. I washed the drying-up cloths in detergent as instructed, rinsed them and put them in a laundry basket. The drying cupboard, at the foot of the back stairs, was reached by a stone corridor. Dirk ran ahead of me, then stopped abruptly a few yards from the kitchen and began to whine and sniff excitedly.

  ‘Be quiet, Dirk,’ I said as he started to bark. ‘Must you be such a noisy dog –’ I stopped because I smelled something so horrible that it made me gag: the awful stink of rotting meat. I looked about for a dead rat or mouse. But the corridor was bare of decomposing flesh.

  ‘Mrs Whale,’ I called, ‘do you mind coming here a minute?’

  Her face wore its usual shut, suffering look but the moment she came within range of the smell, her expression changed to disgust.

  ‘Oh, God!’ she lifted her apron to cover her nose. ‘It can’t be!’

  ‘What? What can’t it be?’

  ‘Oh – nothing. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m that tired.’

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  Mrs Whale shook her head and almost ran back to the kitchen. I heard feet padding down the stairs.

  ‘Hello, Harriet. What are you up to?’ It was Jonno. He had sat next to me in the cinema and held my hand through the second half of The Four Musketeers, which had distracted me from the film and provided a source of amusement for the girls.

  ‘Can’t you smell it?’

  ‘What? Oh, Christ!’ He had come within range of it. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘It’s coming from this wall. But I can’t see how. It looks solid to me.’

  Jonno took a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose. ‘Well, who’d have thought it?’

  ‘Thought what?’

  ‘You’ve obviously never heard of the ghost of Fanny Cost?’

  ‘No! Who is she?’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else. It’s enough to make one shoot the cat.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a – Oh, be sick, you mean. All right, tell me about her,’ I insisted as we climbed the stairs. ‘It would be excellent if there was enough to make a separate article. So many ghosts are only good for a sentence or two – you know, the usual grey ladies and little black dogs and so on. They simple appear and disappear and it becomes boring.’

  ‘How blasé commerce has made you,’ complained Jonno. ‘Have you forgotten the mysteries attendant on visitations from another world? Confirmation for a start that there’s life beyond death and that we’re under observation by vengeful spirits jamming up the ether? It gives a quite different slant to the question of good and evil if a hasty absolution isn’t enough to guarantee safe conduct into eternity.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know all that but I’m not paid to be philosophical. I’ve simply got to dish the supernatural dirt and make it snappy.’

  ‘All right, hold the front page, here it is. Fanny Cost was a servant, sometime during Cromwell’s rule. She had an illegitimate baby. Sir Oswald, the second baronet, and his wife were red-hot Puritans. Never off their knees. There are portraits of both of them in the gallery. Ghastly-looking couple like a pair of crows.’

  ‘I thought the Pyes were royalists and catholics.’

  ‘There were swingeing fines for being on the wrong side. Also you could have your head cut off. Anyway, poor Fanny’s master and mistress were determined to make an example of the girl and her seducer. But before she could be made to tell who the father was, Fanny Cost disappeared, as did one of the grooms. Everyone concluded they’d run away together. But the other servants started to complain about a frightful stink and eventually they took down the walls in the servants’ quarters and discovered her decomposing body with the dead infant in her arms. Sir Oswald was the local magistrate, conveniently. There was a trial, the missing groom was found guilty in his absence and placed under sentence of death should he return. But Old Gally’s arm started wandering with awful regularity and it always pointed at the master of the house He fell ill and died soon after, confessing on his deathbed that he’d been the father of Fanny Cost’s baby. He’d paid the groom to murder the girl and the baby, brick them up and make himself scarce afterwards. She’s supposed to manifest herself by a smell of corruption. Of course it’s a load of cobblers.’ I thought Jonno looked uneasy.

  ‘Of course it is. But don’t tell Maggie.’

  ‘You don’t mean she believes in ghosts?’

  ‘Yes. And it terrifies her.’

  ‘All right.’ He gave me an uncertain grin.

  We had reached the head of the stairs. Our voices were thrown back in an echo that had lost all power to frighten me. I was practically convinced that the first time I had heard it, the voices had been those of Georgia and Max embarking on their flirtation and that’s why they had not answered me. I felt angry all over again when I thought of it. Angry with myself, that is.

  ‘What say we go to the dra
wing room for a snifter?’ suggested Jonno.

  ‘It nearly midnight. I’m going to bed. And so should you.’ I took him by the arm and led him along the landing. ‘What were you coming down for, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, just a thimble of something to keep out the cold. I’ve been reading to Maggie about true love and its reverses, and that’s thirsty work.’

  ‘One thimble will become a jugful. You know that.’

  ‘Bloody hell! You talk as if I was an alcoholic.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No!’ Then, less sharply, ‘Am I?’

  ‘If you can’t manage without it, you are.’

  We had reached the long gallery. ‘I’ll take my degenerate self off to bed then,’ he said.

  ‘Good night.’

  I kept my face severe but then, because he looked so hangdog, I kissed his cheek in token of friendship. It was a mistake. Men aren’t really very interested in friendship with women. Jonno put his arms round me and kissed me on the lips. All kinds of tenuous emotions and incoherent thoughts began to buzz in my brain, none of them anything to do with sexual gratification. I was afraid that outright rejection might set him back on the path to self-destruction. For some reason I felt a sense of responsibility, a strong desire to see him do better. Perhaps this was because he made me think of Bron, which prompted an affectionate, sisterly feeling. On the other hand it was impossible not to think of Max. After what I decided was a decent interval, neither rejecting nor encouraging, I drew back.

  ‘Sorry. It’s the beard.’ This was partly true. It was horribly prickly, like pressing one’s lips to a doormat.

  ‘God, I hope you weren’t imagining I was your father?’ His voice was excited and he stroked my breast with a hand that shook. I was reminded that he was hardly more than a boy, actually a few months younger than me. Max had been so confident that I had felt like a timid teenager. With Jonno I felt like a sensible middle-aged woman with a subscription to the Spectator and a well-organised compost heap. ‘No,’ His voice took on its customary tone of self-loathing, ‘I’m a fool. You were thinking of him, weren’t you?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked to gain time.

  ‘Don’t be disingenuous.’ He gripped my arm. ‘Did you go to bed with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Look, Jonno, it really isn’t any of your business whether I did or I didn’t.’ I decided to get angry.

  ‘Isn’t it? We’ll see about that.’ He gripped me harder. ‘O-o-ow! What the hell is that? Something stabbed me.’

  I felt in the pocket of my dress. ‘Sorry. It’s Old Gally’s finger.’ I held it out and we regarded it solemnly, unlovely object that it was. ‘I found it this morning. I thought it was safer to keep it on me until I could decide what to do with it.’ Also I had wanted to reassure myself that I was not afraid of it. I very nearly wasn’t.

  ‘You’re chancing your luck, aren’t you, carrying it around like a tube of fruit-gums? I hope getting pricked doesn’t count as being pointed at. Suddenly I don’t feel too good.’

  ‘Really, Jonno! I’m surprised at you. Anyone can see it’s just a bit of old tin incapable of doing anyone any harm –’

  Just then the lights flickered and went out.

  ‘All right, Harriet! Don’t yell like that! It’s only the generator. Mm! I must say it feels very nice to be clung to for a change instead of having to do all the clinging myself. Though that’s a very odd scent you’re wearing.’

  Despite the beard I had clutched him instinctively and screamed with shock. ‘Oh, Jonno! The finger! It’s gone!’

  ‘No! Oh, my God! Then it’s all up with us! Prepare to meet thy doom! Oh, bother!’

  The lights had come on again. I let go of Jonno, who was grinning. ‘Now who’s a cowardy-custard,’ he laughed. ‘Not so sceptical now, are we?’

  ‘I’m not too good in the dark. But what’s happened to the finger?’

  He dangled it in front of my nose. ‘I consider it my manly duty to take charge of it from now on. You’re only a sissy girl.’

  ‘The beastly thing leaves rust marks on everything anyway.’

  ‘As heir to the Pye fortune I really ought to find some way of getting rid of it. It might change my luck.’

  ‘I think you’ve had very good luck,’ I protested. ‘You’re strong and healthy with plenty of brains. Without the coconut matting, you’d be good-looking. You’ll inherit a wonderful house in a beautiful part of England. What more could anyone want? As for happiness, you’ll have to make it for yourself, like everyone else.’

  ‘All right, Miss Pretty Perfect, get off that soap-box and let’s be having some more of you.’ He stopped and sniffed. ‘There it is again. A phantom smell of – public lavatories.’

  ‘It’s carbolic. Look, Jonno, I’m so tired I can hardly think. I’ve got to go to bed.’

  Hearing remonstrance in my voice, Dirk, who had been strolling about the gallery in a bored sort of way, sauntered over and began to growl.

  ‘All right. One last kiss to show you aren’t angry with me. Oh, bugger! Shut him up, Harriet! He’ll wake the house.’ Dirk had decided to draw our attention to the fact that he had become weary of this conversation. He threw back his massive head and let rip. His broad chest had acquired deep penetrating tones.

  I hauled him away. ‘Good night,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘See you on kitchen detail.’

  ‘Good night, sweet Harriet.’

  ‘Damn,’ I said to myself as I lay in the darkness beside the sleeping Cordelia. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘Hello? Hello? Would you speak up? The line’s very bad.’

  ‘Is that you, Harriet?’ Rupert’s voice on the telephone sounded impatient and preoccupied.

  I expect mine sounded much the same. The morning had flown by, we were just about to have lunch and I had to choose between spending the afternoon dusting books in the library or writing my column, the sort of dilemma women have wrestled with for centuries. Also Cordelia had been nagging me for days to help her with her tapestry. Her ambitious attempt to render, in appliqué and satin stitch, her own sufferings as a bed-ridden invalid had resulted in something that looked like a screaming baby being roasted on a spit.

  ‘Listen!’ Rupert continued irritably, though I had not so much as breathed a word. ‘I haven’t time to explain. I’ve a meeting in three minutes. I’m coming back late tomorrow night. The train gets in to Bunton at eleven thirty. Meet it, will you?’

  I was piqued by his peremptory tone. ‘Actually, I’ve got an awful lot to do. I’ll get Archie to collect you.’

  ‘Don’t argue. I particularly want you to come. Alone.’

  ‘Flattering though that is,’ my tone was sarcastic, ‘I shall probably have my hands full. Not only washing up for a large number of people but my article to write. You seem to forget, I have a job.’ I spoiled the loftiness of this by adding, ‘Also, I can’t drive.’

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t drive?’

  ‘I haven’t passed my test.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-two. I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything. You’re thirty-two and you can’t drive.’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  I was taken aback. ‘Why don’t you then?’

  ‘Because Archie likes to. People are arriving. I must go. I’ll take a taxi. But wait up for me, will you?’

  ‘All right. But why me, particularly?’

  There was a brief pause. ‘I want to talk to you. How’s Maggie?’

  ‘Much better this morning.’

  ‘Everything else all right? You sound harassed.’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Good.’ I could hear voices talking and laughing in the background. ‘Don’t forget.’

  The receiver was put down. I might have enjoyed speculating about this enigmatic telephone call except that Cordelia was banging the gong and I had forgotten to pu
t out ladles for the sauce boats.

  Lunch was a very flaky leek and walnut strudel. It was impossible to talk and eat it, without blowing crumbs everywhere. Archie was increasingly inventive, partly because he was easily bored and partly because the Bunton shops were inadequately supplied with the kind of ingredients that appealed to his epicurean tastes.

  ‘Do you know, it’s only just occurred to me,’ Jonno addressed me over the cheese and syrup pudding. A Jonno, by the way, well-behaved and sober, who had done his best to be helpful that morning, turning fruit in the apple store, cleaning out the hen-house and bringing in logs. When not peevish with self-pity he was a good companion, amusing and jolly. I wished, though, he would not try to kiss me whenever we were alone. I had been embarrassed by Mrs Whale finding us in a clinch among the poor dangling corpses in the game larder. Also I felt anxious about whither this was tending. I was prepared to be kissed if that would encourage Jonno to believe that not all relationships were doomed to unhappiness but I drew the line at making love. ‘If your brother’s called Oberon,’ said Jonno, ‘and your sisters are Ophelia, Portia and Cordelia, why are you called Harriet? That’s not a Shakespearean heroine.’

  ‘It’s my second name,’ I said. ‘Custard?’

  ‘So what’s your first name?’

  ‘Come to think of it, why aren’t you, as the eldest son, called Oswald or Galahad?’

  Jonno made a face. ‘John’s my second name. I was ragged about the Galahad so I dropped it. OK, spill the beans.’

  I told him what it was and he laughed until he was pink in the face. ‘Ha, ha! Oh dear! Hee, hee! I can see why you abandoned it in favour of Harriet.’