As she went up the steps of her own house she heard the telephone ringing. “I’m back,” she called. “I’ll get it.” She picked up the receiver. “Hullo?”
There was a click at the end of the line and then the muffled voice she had heard once before. She still could not make out words but there was something about the tone that touched a spring in her. Suddenly she began to yell: “Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!” There was another click and the dialling tone. Whose voice had it been? Whose? And then she had a dreadful thought: was it anyone’s? Was she hearing the voice at all? Why did she hear it sometimes and not others? Was she slipping — the phrase came back to her from Bill’s notes — ‘over the edge’?
She went into the kitchen and said to Penny: “Have there been any calls in the past few days that you’ve forgotten to tell me about?”
Penny frowned in concentration. “No ... only ...”
“Only?”
“There was one yesterday when you were outside. I answered, but there wasn’t anyone there. It must have been a wrong number.”
When she came back from Addiscombe that evening she took the receiver off the hook and placed it on Bill’s desk. Now no one could telephone her. She was isolated. Cut off.
Inevitably, her mind went back to Mrs. Leech. She had believed her story, but what if the woman was simply a consummate actress? What if she had admitted the two visits to lend veracity to her innocence, thereby enabling her to bury the attack on the child? But was she clever enough? Rachel knew in her own mind that she was not, and she was forced to think again of the possibility of Alec and Penny. Had he, perhaps, come down to see Penny? She recalled how angry he had been when she had been accused of stealing the ring. Had he come to see his daughter? Was there some undercurrent between the two of them about which Rachel knew nothing but which, in some inexplicable way, was endangering not only herself but her child as well? Could Alec be making the telephone calls?
Then, almost by accident, as she went over in her mind what Penny had told her, she came across something that did not fit. She tried to recall Penny’s exact words: “I thought I’d heard you go out. I thought I heard the car.” Had she said ‘the car’ or ‘a car’? Either way, it ruled out Mrs. Leech, for she had no car, and it ruled out Alec, for he could not see to drive. There was only one person she knew whom it did not rule out. Celia. And that, she told herself, was absurd.
13
“What I’m doing now is racking the wine off the lees,” Alec said. “Lovely phrase, that, don’t you think? The wine has finished fermenting and is beginning to clear, so I’m going to siphon it into another jar.” The new wine began to run from one glass demijohn to the other.
They were in his kitchen. Rachel was standing at the window, half-listening, half-brooding on her own thoughts. She had gone to see Alec because he was the only person to whom she felt she could talk. In the light of a bright, frosty winter’s day, with the sun turning the snow to silver, her conclusions of the previous evening seemed crazy. But she knew she had to talk to someone. As she walked through the fields, hunched into her sheepskin jacket, treading carefully so as not to wrench her knee, she imagined how she was going to sound: some mysterious enemy is trying, not only to frighten me out of my mind, but to kill my child. Someone who must know me ... At that point, she almost turned back, because it occurred to her that vagrants sometimes wandered the lanes of Sussex. She pictured a half-starved tramp slinking up her drive, seeing the baby chewing its rusk. Perhaps he had bent over the pram, grabbed the piece of dry toast and, as Sophie had opened her mouth to yell with righteous fury, thrust the pillow over her face to stop the noise, and fled. But would he have taken the time to tuck in the blankets? How could he have made the scratches on the pram and on Sophie’s neck? She had gone on steadily towards Alec’s cottage.
“I’ll leave it for a month or so, and rack it again,” he said. “You should try making wine. Give you something to do.” She broke in: “Alec, would you say that I was a rational human being?”
He swung his good eye onto her. “Big question, that,” he said, smiling. “I’ve always wondered about rationalism and women. Pragmatism, yes, but rationalism means logic and ...”
“I’m serious, Alec.”
“Well, since you ask, I would have to say that I’ve been doubtful.”
“You mean because of the cat?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Things have been happening which are difficult to explain. When unexplained things happen, you get confused.”
“Of course you do, love, especially after an accident like yours.”
She moved away from the window and sat down in a straight chair. “It’s not a nice feeling to know that someone hates you.”
“Oh, come on now! You’re exaggerating again.”
“No, it’s true. My only problem is how do I convince you. Everything I say you’ll put down to exaggeration or imagination. You know how it is when people think someone is — is insane, when they’re not; when whatever they do to try and prove their own sanity, the more mad they seem.”
Bubbles began to appear in the plastic tube and Alec moved it deeper into the wine.
“What exactly is bothering you?” he said.
This was the point at which she could stop. It had taken courage to go to him, but he was all she had. During her walk she had realised, with a sense of pain, that she was a total stranger in this enclosed English landscape. That without Bill she had almost no individual existence. She was cut off from her roots, from people she had grown up with, worked with, gone to school with. In San Francisco or Los Angeles she would only have had to lift a telephone to be able to communicate with someone who knew her. Here her relationships had been on the most superficial level: going out for drinks with so-and-so, or having so-and-so in for drinks; dining out, returning the invitation. And all the people mere acquaintances. She had thought, not too long ago, that she was making a friend at last. That friend had been Celia.
Alec took off his striped apron and said, “Come through to the sitting-room, have a glass of wine and tell your Uncle Alec.” He built up the fire and poured her a glass of rose.
She told her story without emotion, watching herself, playing the game she had described to him earlier of the sane person who needs to convince others of his sanity. Imagination, exaggeration: those were the two words she had used and she was careful not to colour her story. She began on the day she had come out of hospital. She told him about her return to the house, about the unlikeable Nurse Griffin, the writing on the welcome-home sign, the headless statue, the telephone calls. She repeated the incidents he already knew concerning the cat and she told them without excitement so that he, by comparing what he knew himself with what she was saying, would be forced to recognise that she was telling the unvarnished truth. She wove Celia and their growing friendship into her story, the association which had its high point on the day they had spent in London.
Keeping the same even tone, she recalled the horror of Sophie’s near-death, described her own depression and fear that her mind was becoming infected, and her visit to Mrs. Leech. Then she told him about Bill’s first wife and the notes she had found under his typewriter.
His strange face had been immobile throughout her recollection, now his eyebrows shot up.
“But surely the two situations are separate?” he said. “I mean, what on earth can Bill’s first wife have to do with the other incidents? She’s in America, you said.”
“That’s what Celia told me.”
“Then she can’t have anything to do with the phone calls, nor what happened to Sophie.”
“No. I wasn’t thinking she had, but I can’t help feeling that the whole series of events are connected somehow, and, Alec, there’s one person who could be the — the catalyst.”
There was a pause, then he said, softly: “You mean Celia?”
She nodded, not daring to look at him, wondering when his anger would break throug
h.
Instead he said: “Why do you think she is doing this to you — if she is?”
She shrugged. “She’s Sally’s friend. Could she be doing it for Sally? I mean, it would all fit, wouldn’t it? The plot in the book. Oh, God, Alec, suppose Bill wants to get rid of me and go back to her! Maybe Celia is giving them a helping hand, trying to make me go off my head, or run away and leave Bill, or something.”
“Rachel, my dear, do you seriously believe Bill would have anything to do with such an appalling idea? You know him a great deal better than I do, but I can tell you categorically that he would not.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if I know him at all. There’s so much about himself he has never told me. His child by Sally, for instance.”
“He told you how unhappy his marriage had been. Seems to me natural he would want to forget it, especially now he is so contented with you and Sophie. No, you’ve let your imagination run away with you, love. Remember those depressions you had after Sophie was born? You’re a writer and writers have strong imaginations or they wouldn’t be writers. I believe that right now, after the trauma of the accident, you’re having another post-operative gloom, so to speak.”
“No, that was different. I grant you I imagined all sorts of nonsense then, but this is real. Alec, I did not imagine the telephone calls. Nor the pillow over Sophie’s face. Nor that cat at the window. Could it have been put there, do you think, deliberately, to frighten me?
“You — you mentioned Celia. Do you have any grounds for thinking her capable of such things, apart from her friendship with Sally?”
She offered him a cigarette and as he took it she noticed that his hand was shaking.
“I have a feeling that someone wants to isolate me,” she said, avoiding a direct answer. “Franco was poisoned. Then there was the ring incident and Celia was annoyed because I did not sack Penny. If I had, I wouldn’t have had anyone. Oh, Alec, I’m sorry! I know it all sounds ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder if I am going crazy!”
“Let me give you another glass of wine.” He stood up and turned his back on her. “Why have you told me all this?”
“There isn’t anyone else. I guess that, really, I wanted you to tell me I should go to the police. But clearly I can’t. Not with a story that sounds unlikely even to me, when I tell it. And you don’t believe a word of it.”
“It isn’t a case of believing. Of course I believe some of those things happened. It’s a question of emphasis. You see everything subjectively. You’re lonely and imaginative. You’re in a strange country, with few friends. But everything, Rachel, has a rational explanation.”
“Okay, tell me.”
“Right. Start with the cat: there are dozens of cats in this area. The one you hit could be dead already. You’re seeing others, but you have it fixed firmly in your mind that the one animal is deliberately terrorising you. That’s your feeling of guilt, Rachel, nothing more. Charlie’s dead so you can’t focus it on him and you substitute the cat which was injured in the same accident.”
“Go on.”
“You’ve already found your own explanation for the defacing of the sign and the statue. Now, the telephone calls: alas, the countryside is full of nuts, of one kind or another, the heavy breathers, the obscene callers. Yours is simply a variation on the theme: some chap who’s picked your number from the book and is calling to see what kind of a reaction he gets. Sophie’s accident: she was eating her rusk, the cat — a cat — jumped into the pram and took it, scratching her neck at the same time. You thought of it yourself, remember.”
“And tucked her in so her arms were tight by her sides? And drove away in a car?”
“Who told you all that? Penny, wasn’t it? I’m fond of Penny and her family but, let’s face it, though the child is the kindest creature in the world, she is inclined to be slow and her memory is unreliable.”
She was suddenly tired of Alec; tired of his wine and his stories and his avuncular manner; tired of his patched face and his bravery; his sweet reasonableness. So he thought he had explained everything away. But the incidents had not happened to him. He hadn’t listened to the weird telephone calls, the silences, or seen Sophie’s blue face, or felt the eyes watching in the garden and the fields.
She stood up abruptly and, almost without farewell, left him. She did not even glance in the window as she limped around to the path which would take her home, so she missed the expression on his face as he stood watching her pass. When she had disappeared he went slowly to the telephone.
Her knee had begun to ache, as it still did after a walk, and she was pleased to see the house, although the sky had clouded over and it looked raw and gaunt and secretive in its clearing. She built up the fire in the sitting-room. The log basket was almost empty and she went out to where the wood was kept, split some logs with a hand-axe, filled the basket and carried it into the house. A sudden pain shot through her knee which left her gasping. She put the basket down and leaned against the wall, where Penny found her.
“It’s your leg, isn’t it?” she said anxiously. “You shouldn’t be carrying weights like this.” She picked up the basket. “I’ll take it. I’m used to carrying. You ought to see the wood I carry at home.”
They went into the sitting-room and Penny built up the fire until it was burning brightly. “There,” she said. “Now you sit down and rest your leg.”
Rachel felt a flood of gratitude towards her. And she did not believe Penny had been mistaken in her story of the pram incident. She had been too positive, repeated it too many times.
That evening, as she was preparing to take the girl home, the telephone rang. She felt as though a cold hand had closed over her heart. “I’ll get it,” she called. Her leg felt easier and as long as she did not put her weight on it, she could walk without pain. She went into Bill’s room, closed the door and lifted the receiver. This time she did not speak. There was a similar silence at the other end. But she was not as afraid as she had been on the previous occasions. Perhaps it had been her talk with Alec, perhaps he had done some good simply by listening. And then, abruptly, the silence was broken by a man’s voice. It was muffled and had a metallic resonance. She had to strain to catch the words.
“You’re losing your mind,” the voice said. “You’re becoming insane. There is only one way out. Do you want to go to an asylum? Do you want to spend the rest of your life among the mad?” The tones were hypnotic, insistent.
“No!” Rachel whispered. “No! No!”
She put the receiver down and thrust the telephone away. She put her hand across her mouth, pressing so tightly that she choked. She was shaking again, but this time with anger. How dare he! How dare they! No one, no one was going to invade her home like this. She began hobbling around the room, thinking furiously. She had to do something. She could not be passive; that wasn’t in her nature. Fight back. That was the only way. But how? She didn’t know who to fight. Then she thought: California. If Bill was with Sally, that was the first thing she must know. Then other things would fall into place. So that’s where she had to start. And Sophie could come with her.
She picked up the telephone again and called a travel agency in Chichester. They could get her on a BA flight leaving Heathrow at eleven o’clock in the morning in four days’ time. But she wanted to go now, this minute. They were sorry, but the Christmas travel rush was already beginning.
“All right,” she said, and gave the number of her credit card. “Book us.”
She felt an immediate sense of relief at having done something positive. This time next week, she thought, I’ll know. I’ll find them. Wherever they are, I’ll find them, and I’ll know.
The four intervening days stretched ahead of her like an eternity. Could she hang on for four days and four nights? What about Sophie? Would she be in danger again? Would there be another attempt ... ?
The idea came like an answer to a prayer: Penny could take Sophie. •’Rachel went to the bathroom where Penny was amusing the child wi
th a floating plastic duck. When she mentioned her idea the round face cracked open with pleasure. “You mean take her home? Have her to myself? Why, I’d give anything ...”
*
Penny lived on a small-holding with her mother and her brothers and sisters near the town of Addiscombe. From what she had said and from what Rachel had seen herself in her journeys backwards and forwards each day, the Masons had come down in the world. When Penny’s father was alive they had been able to make a living on their forty acres. They had kept a couple of cows, a couple of horses, and grown vegetables. But times had changed and now they struggled. The house was single-storied, had been built by a developer in the fifties and was already beginning to fall to pieces.
Inside, it was untidy and the furniture had been knocked about by children and yet, unlike Mrs. Leech’s cottage, there was a warmth, a welcome about the Mason place. Mrs. Mason was in her mid-forties and must once have been pretty. She was wearing a pair of skiing pants that had seen better days and a tight-fitting, roll-neck jersey that emphasised her bust. She exuded a ripe sexuality. Her light-skinned features had a kind of serene comfortableness and, although she had several children of her own around, she welcomed Sophie as though a new baby was the one thing she desired most of all.
“Ain’t she lovely?” she said. “You come to stay with us, darling? You wait until my others see you. I won’t get a look in.” She picked Sophie out of the carry-cot and swung her with an easy, practised motion to her right hip. “There! What a big girl.”
Rachel’s excuse for the arrangement was that she was taking Sophie to America for Christmas and that she had to go to London before they left. Penny did not care what the reasons were. She followed Rachel into the house, her face shining with pleasure and anticipation.
They put Sophie down in a small, clean, warm room next to the kitchen. “Won’t you have something?” Mrs. Mason said. “A drop of tea? Or there’s some ginger wine.”
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