‘No, no, Samuel, I didn’t – I couldn’t!’ she whimpered. ‘A throw-back! My grandmother Rosie was—’
‘Silence!’ he roared.
In the ensuing hush I heard the gravel scrunch under approaching feet, and then Dante’s arm was around me. I half-turned and clung to him like a wet extra from Lorna Doone, my knees crumpling.
Pa stared at him. ‘Who is this man? He is too young to be your paramour – unless, evil child, this is another? Is this the fornicator who has paid for your services, as I am told? Can no—’
‘You must be Cass’s father, Mr Leigh? I’ve heard all about you – and all of it true, it seems,’ Dante interrupted, in a voice incisive enough to cut steel. ‘I am afraid you are trespassing on my property, and unless you want me to forcibly eject you from it you will have to behave in a reasonable manner.’ He glanced at Francis and added in a quieter voice: ‘Doesn’t he have any medication to calm him down when he’s like this?’
I don’t remember anyone speaking to Pa like that. I gazed at Dante in wonderment, and so did Francis. I think it was wonderment.
He half-smiled down at me and added: ‘And I would like to say that I am not a fornicator, and that my intentions towards her are perfectly honourable.’
Well, there’s a disappointment, I thought.
Pa rallied and said in slightly modified tones of outrage: ‘So she has fooled you, too? Unhappy man! But I will waste no more time: tell me where my innocent child, my Jane, is hidden, and I will take her and go from this vile place.’
‘Jane?’ Dante raised one eyebrow. ‘Cass’s twin sister? I met her some time ago when she called in here on her way to London. To stay with her sister-in-law, I think she said.’
‘Is this the truth?’
‘I keep trying to tell you, Pa – I got Phily on the phone this morning and she said that Jane was there,’ Francis interrupted and got a glare for his pains.
‘It’s true, Pa,’ I said. ‘She’s in London.’
Pa looked from one to the other of us. ‘If it is not true, then judgement will fall on all your heads!’ he roared. ‘But I weary – I must go home to my flock and wait for my Jane to come home! I must leave the house of the Whore of Babylon—’
‘Do you mean Orla?’ I blurted, startled.
‘She who dresses as a strumpet for the temptation of men.’
‘That’s Orla.’
‘Do you joke about such evils?’ he demanded, coming a step closer. I must have flinched, for Dante’s arm tightened. Pa looked at him and said: ‘I see she has fooled you, but I will tell you what she is!’
‘Your daughter? The one you cruelly abused and traumatized when she was a child?’
‘It is no crime to try and take the devil from the child. It was retribution – in the cradle she was the very image of the man her mother lusted after.’
‘No, no, Samuel!’ whimpered Ma.
‘Yes! Did I not come back from my preaching tour to find you lusting after him? Did I not find the photographs in your drawer, the records hidden in the attic?’
‘No, no!’
‘Yes, and the devil sent this child made in his dark image to pervert my own innocent babe, my Jane. Devil’s Spawn!’
‘Rubbish,’ Dante said crisply. ‘If you weren’t clearly demented I’d knock you down for what you did to Cass. And you!’ he turned to Ma. ‘How could you let your child be shut in the dark for hours, punished for something she didn’t even understand?’
‘She couldn’t help it, Dante!’ I whispered. ‘She couldn’t stand against him – look at her!’
‘The woman and man are as one,’ Pa declared. ‘I did what was necessary, what was right. But I do not stand here arguing with you if my daughter is not here.’
‘One daughter is,’ Dante said quietly.
‘No child of mine. She will burn – and you with her. It is clear to me now,’ he added heavily, ‘that you are her match in iniquity. Evil! Evil! I must guard the pure flame! I must—’
‘Go before I kick you out?’ Dante said pleasantly, but there was that in his voice that caused Pa to shut his mouth on his final words, turn on his heel and stride regally off.
Francis gave me a comical look and plunged after him, but Ma was halted in her tracks by Dante’s voice: ‘Mrs Leigh!’
She paused, half-turned like some timid creature unused to daylight. Her eyes flickered to me and away.
Dante pulled me towards her. ‘Don’t you want to look at your daughter after all these years? To wish her well, with me?’
‘She is not mine – the devil’s,’ whispered Ma.
‘You know very well that isn’t so,’ Dante said more gently. ‘Your husband is out of earshot, so tell me the truth about this man he said you were lusting after. Who is the dark sinner he sees when he looks at Cass?’
She stared at him, then at me: ‘Perhaps she is the devil’s way of tormenting me for my sins? For I did lust after him for a time, it is true: he was like a fire in my soul.’
I stared at her. ‘Did you have an affair with another man, then, Ma?’
Ma took a slow step back, her eyes fixed on Dante’s face. ‘No: but in my lustful heart I was guilty. He was dark like you,’ she added, looking at Dante. ‘The King.’
Now I knew she was as mad as Pa. Can insanity be catching?
‘Elvis,’ Dante said. ‘Of course! You had a crush on Elvis!’
‘Elvis? You mean I was punished because my mother had a crush on Elvis Presley?’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘That was all it was about? And I don’t look anything like him!’ I added.
I could see Dante’s lip twitching in that way that meant he was finding it all highly amusing, but I seemed to have had an acute sense of humour failure.
‘No – she was my punishment every day, reminding me!’ Ma cried.
Something in my head blazed like a great light and I exclaimed: ‘In my dream – Elvis was the awful thing in the cupboard I wanted to escape from and never could! I remember touching you, Ma, when I was too small to understand what I was reading in your mind, and you were looking at me and thinking of this great, dark, sneering monster in a glistening white suit: and you hated both of us!’
‘Not hated,’ whispered Ma.
‘Sarah!’ bellowed my father. ‘Sarah!’
Ma took two more steps backwards, still not looking at me, though my arms were stretched out towards her like she might suddenly touch me with the love she had never ever shown to me, only to Jane.
Then she turned and ran jerkily after Pa and Francis.
‘All those nightmares,’ I said disgustedly. ‘And after all, it was only Elvis in the cupboard!’
‘Let’s hope he has now left the building,’ Dante said with a straight face.
23
The Pendulum and the Pit
Cass Leigh’s new novel is a bursting boil on the face of publishing …
(Extract from a letter to the editor, by Outraged of Upper Slaughter)
My legs (together with my brain) ceased to function with dramatic suddenness, though I don’t know whether it was the shock or the anti-climax that did it. Or maybe it was the fearsome image of the monster, freshly released from the cupboard, in his tight, white, rhinestone-studded suit?
As I crumpled, Dante swept me into his arms and carried me back towards the west wing, and over his shoulder I saw Max, a surreal figure in silky Armani suiting, step through an archway into the rose garden and stop dead, staring.
His appearance was even more incongruous than Pa’s, but just as unwanted. I put my arms around Dante’s neck and turned my face into his shoulder.
I did glance back once, but Max had gone.
Had he really been there? And if so, had his beard really vanished, and been replaced by its own ghost in white skin? Neither question seemed very important any more.
I was not quite so out of it that I didn’t notice and appreciate how effortlessly Dante carted my not-inconsiderable weight about … And I now had no idea what fil
m I was starring in, except that it seemed to be somewhere between Gone With the Wind and a remake of Jaws, where the shark turned out to be the good guy.
Far from being afraid of him any more I now didn’t want to ever let go. He was safe, strong, solid, sensible, and even my father had backed down from a confrontation with him. (He was also tall, dark, brooding, haunted and intense – but hey, who isn’t?)
I decided to elect him Champion of my Sanity, and once I was curled up cosily with him on the old sofa in his study, hovering somewhere between hysterical tears and laughter, it was tempting to elect him something else, too.
He held me close, murmuring comforting words and stroking my hair, and then after a while I gave him a watery smile and he kissed me … and I kissed him back, and one thing led to another.
Only unfortunately it didn’t lead all that far, since he said I was deeply shocked and upset and he wasn’t going to take advantage of me, and I was definitely too exhausted to take advantage of him … this time. It was nice of him, though, and I certainly wasn’t about to disillusion him by saying I’d appreciate a little less consideration and a bit more action.
Eventually he remembered the birthday party and seance and duty called, so I went to my room to wash and tidy up. Then we went down to the visitors’ sitting room for Ghost Cake together: for after all, why shouldn’t the Lord and Master of the Manor take his hired help around with him if he wanted to?
The room had been decked out in ghost-shaped Halloween balloons, and Clara’s cake occupied a small table in a central position. While her knitted sweaters were all extremely zany she was not the most artistic of cake designers, so the cake was just round and blue with a cut-out icing ghost in a conventional white sheet on top, and ‘Happy Birthday, Leo’ picked out in yellow around it. There were a few token candles.
Eddie and Rosetta were setting out glasses, teacups and little plates of sandwiches and stuff, and looked pleased to see us, although Eddie always looked pleased to see everyone, so that was nothing new. His hair was tied up in a flowered silk square, like a sunny-natured pirate.
The others were all grouped in an incongruous tableau around a table at the end of a room: Madame Duval, vast in midnight-blue velvet and Egyptian beads, with Reg in anxious attendance; Jason and Mrs Bream bending over what seemed to be a map, watched with keen interest by her husband and brother.
‘What’s going on?’ Dante asked suspiciously. ‘Oh, you’ve all met Cass, haven’t you?’ he added, without bothering to add who or what I was, which was probably just as well since even I was finding my position pretty hard to define.
‘Jason just got here,’ Rosetta explained nervously. ‘Mr and Mrs Bream visited his shop earlier and got talking, Dante, and it turns out that Mrs Bream can find missing people using a map and items of their belongings and a crystal. Jason’s wife disappeared, you know … and I thought you wouldn’t mind if they tried?’
‘I can hardly complain, since I’m going to let Madame hold her seance later,’ he said bitterly. ‘It sounds perfectly harmless by comparison!’
Dante and I watched as the crystal pendulum hung still over a detailed map of the area around Westery. I suppose they were making sure she wasn’t nearby first before going for the large-scale stuff.
Then suddenly the crystal began to move. Mrs Bream muttered a bit, her eyes half shut, and a slither of cerise nylon sari unfolded down her arm. Then she opened her blue-lidded eyes and laid a pointed fingernail on a spot on the map. ‘There!’
We all crowded up but Dante, being taller than the others, was the first to spot the significance: ‘That’s on my land,’ he said. He leaned closer. ‘Somewhere in the overgrown flower gardens beyond the pond?’
‘There’s a new rockery,’ Eddie said unexpectedly. ‘In the old gardens. Someone made a rockery.’
We all looked at him.
‘Jack Craig? Must have been, no one else would have bothered,’ I said. ‘But why? Surely he—’
‘He must have liked rockeries,’ Eddie said simply.
‘Or he made it to hide something!’ Jason said, leaping slightly wildly to his feet. ‘My wife had been having an affair with him just before she vanished but I came here that night looking for her, and he swore he hadn’t seen her!’
Dante laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Jason. There’s probably nothing in it. Anyway, the light’s gone, there’s nothing you can do until morning.’
‘A torch.’ Jason exclaimed, looking wildly round as though one might materialize.
‘Absolutely not. It’s all ridiculous nonsense, but if you really want to go out and dig the garden up at dawn tomorrow, feel free.’
Mrs Bream was still twiddling her pendulum. ‘There’s definitely something there,’ she murmured with slightly less confidence. ‘I’m not sure … perhaps it isn’t the one you’re searching for? But if there’s a connection … Shall I try again?’
‘No thanks,’ Dante said crisply. ‘And isn’t that the doorbell?’
Rosetta hurried out. Jason ran his hands distractedly through his brown hair and said aggrievedly: ‘It’s all very well for you, Dante, but I think you ought to let her have another shot at it. I’m not going to sleep a wink tonight until—’
He stopped dead and gaped at the apparition in the doorway, his eyes going glazed, as did all the men present except Dante, who merely looked amused. (Though you’d have to know him to realize it.)
Had it been possible, I’d have said Orla’s costume was tighter than before. Certainly the zip was a perilous inch or two lower, and the name Barbarella, embroidered across the chest, was stretched nearly flat.
‘Where is the Birthday Boy?’ she asked seductively, fluttering her gilded eyelashes. But before Leo Bream could do more than gulp nervously and Mrs Bream utter an outraged hiss, Jason had sprung to his feet, tossed an embroidered Chinese shawl over Orla like someone extinguishing a particularly noisy cage-bird, seized her by the arms, and hustled her out.
You know, I think he had that planned.
‘Happy birthday, Mr Bream,’ I said kindly.
‘Leo,’ he murmured weakly, gazing after them as after a vanished dream.
‘Shall we cut the cake?’ asked Rosetta brightly into the ensuing silence. ‘Mr Bream – Leo – I’m lighting the candles, if you’d like to blow them out?’
He had barely enough breath but he managed it in the end, and then we all had a slice of cake that had been exhaled all over, and toasted him in something cheap, thin and sparkling. (A bit like his wife’s sari.)
Jason and Orla didn’t return, and I wondered if they’d retired to Jason’s room or if he’d insisted on taking her home. Whichever, I hoped she was managing to take his mind off tomorrow’s excavations.
After the normality of the tea party, if such it could be called with Dante looking as if he was about to be involved in something noxious (which he was), Madame said we might as well rearrange the room and have what she called her ‘little gathering’ right away.
‘But shouldn’t it be later – after dinner?’ I said, surprised.
‘It’s late enough, and the light’s gone,’ she said in her deep voice. ‘Besides, I never partake of food or drink before I call upon the spirits.’
It was true she’d eaten and drunk nothing, but then neither had Mrs Bream, who seemed to be exhausted after her pendulum swinging (and possibly the shock of Orla’s appearance).
Dante shrugged: ‘As well now as later. The sooner we get this nonsense over the better.’
Madame Duval bridled. ‘I hope you are going into this with a positive attitude, unlike previous occasions when you have maliciously prevented my poor child from contacting me. This time I had hoped—’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Dante promised. ‘I said so, didn’t I? One last time, and that’s it.’
‘We will support you, dear,’ Mrs Bream said. ‘And we three are not unbelievers, but open to all new paranormal experiences.’
‘And I’
ll stay, and Eddie,’ Rosetta declared firmly. ‘I want it finished with, too.’
‘And me,’ I said.
Dante looked at me. ‘No.’
‘I want to, Dante. I want to be here for you,’ I said stubbornly.
‘It could be dangerous. You’ve had enough upsets for one day.’
‘Let her sit with us,’ Madame said. ‘It is clear to me she has some connection with you, and so might provoke my poor abandoned child to speak. To speak!’ she exclaimed on a slightly more rising note that had poor Reg scrabbling for the smelling salts.
But her colour remained steady, and she bossily directed the repositioning of the chairs around two of the tables, pushed together, and the extinguishing of all but one dim wall light and the flickering log fire.
We all sat around the table holding hands, with Dante next to Madame and me on his left. Reg sat on his wife’s right, saying cheerfully: ‘What larks!’
Even through the gloom I could see Eddie’s white teeth as he smiled at me across the table with happy unconcern. Mrs Bream took my left hand in her cold, bird-boned claw.
‘Open your minds,’ whispered Madame Duval thrillingly. ‘Close your eyes, and let the Others make contact with us … Are you there? We hear you!’
There was a silence, during which I for one was not thinking about lost wives, but about Dante, and about how we seemed to be strong for each other when we couldn’t be strong for ourselves, and of how I felt slightly affronted by the ghastly secret in my nightmare cupboard merely being Elvis.
I mean, how scary is he? Even Jane made a more satisfiying monster.
‘There is a dark presence here, trying to bar our way … one who seeks to stop us making contact with the Other Side,’ Madame hissed rather pointedly, and I heard Dante give an exasperated sigh.
‘But we are stronger – we will open the door to our loved ones!’ Mrs Bream declared. ‘I feel them close to us, waiting.’
After that it was all very peaceful for several minutes except for the crackling of the logs, until Mrs Bream’s hand jerked in mine and she gave a sudden snoring snort.
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