Gethsemane Hall

by David Annandale

  “So?” Sturghill asked.

  Meacham kept her voice low. “Yesterday, you said if the house prevented you from leaving again, you’d burn it down.”

  Sturghill’s response was slow. “... and?”

  “I’m having thoughts of a cleansing fire too,” she whispered.

  “House or forest?” Hudson had the volume way down as well. The enemy had ears everywhere.

  “You tell me. The power is centred in the house, but I don’t know what effect a fire would have. The forest is what’s physically preventing us from leaving, but there’s so much moisture I don’t know if we’d get much more than a bit of damp smoke.”

  “We might also seriously piss something off,” Sturghill pointed out.

  “There’s that, too. But ask yourself: can you really get into any more trouble? I don’t think I can.”

  Sturghill nodded. She turned her head towards the woods. “I vote for the trees. Quickest way out is through them. Anything will burn if you try hard enough.”

  “So plenty of fuel, and we do it during the day,” Meacham said. “Agreed?” The other two nodded. “Next question: how do we get the party started?”

  “Petrol in the car,” Hudson suggested.

  “Not your usual sort of holy water,” Meacham said, grinning.

  “You keep forgetting that I’m not a priest.”

  “I think you keep forgetting that you really are.”

  They headed back to the car. “Let’s hope the gas tank hasn’t been emptied,” Sturghill said.

  “Even if it hasn’t, the petrol’s not going to do us much good sitting in there. How do we get it out?” Hudson wanted to know.

  Meacham said, “You’ve had far too nice an upbringing.” A set of four stone steps and a narrow gravel path cut straight between the formal gardens to the half-timbered, connected cottages that stood apart from the main building. These were the former stables, half of which had been converted into staff quarters under Victoria. Meacham headed that way. “Glorified tool shed over here, yes?”

  “Yes.” Hudson followed. “What do you need?”

  “Containers and tubing to start with.”

  “You sound sure you’ll find everything.”

  “Are you saying that if I rummage through the equipment for maintaining an English garden, I won’t find a hose?”

  Hudson conceded the point.

  The cottages were large enough to be a mansion in their own right. The wings had been turned over to vehicles and tool storage. The interior had been remodelled but still had a scent, present behind the odours of oil and fertilizer and paint, of well-mannered age. Wood and stone had matured like good wine. The west wing was the garage. Meacham was startled. She hadn’t noticed an obvious way up here for cars, but when she opened one of the garage doors, she saw the drive had snaked its way here, looping out from the parking area in front of the Hall, entering more woods to the west of the formal gardens, before making its way discreetly here. The cars didn’t look like Gray’s. They were vintage, but not in collectible condition. They were dusty, unused and untended to for a long time. They were the mechanical trace of Gray’s ancestors, waiting in the darkness for their owners to return.

  “What do you think?” Sturghill asked. “Any point in trying these?”

  Meacham shrugged. “Can’t hurt. We’ll feel pretty stupid if we wind up dead because we passed on an easy out.”

  The keys were hanging on the walls of the former stalls. There were four cars: a Daimler, a Rolls, and two Saabs. Meacham and Sturghill tried them all. Click, click, click, click. Mechanisms cold with hostile silence. Meacham drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the black Daimler. She tried not to feel disappointed. She hadn’t expected anything. Still, there was a smug, petty sadism to the unresponsiveness of the cars. “Screw you,” she muttered.

  Thunk. The Daimler’s left turn signal, an orange plastic rectangle, popped up above the driver’s windshield. Meacham jumped. The leather seat was suddenly clammy. It was about to swallow her up. The car was a metal coffin. She fumbled at the door. She couldn’t find the handle. The leather turned slick, viscous. Her hand grasped the handle and yanked it hard enough to make her shoulder scream. The metal dug into her palm, vicious. The door popped open and she tumbled out. She scrambled away. She looked back over her shoulder, saw the seatbelt flapping and squirming like a skewered snake. She ran and collided with Sturghill. They fell to the floor.

  “You okay?” Sturghill asked as they picked themselves up.

  “Think so.” Another look back at the car. The belt was limp. The door hung open. The turn signal pointed like an idiot. The Daimler was inert. She brushed herself off, moderated her breathing. “Any luck?” she asked Sturghill, who shook her head. “Anything weird happen?”

  “No. You?”

  She nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They cut across the cottages’ front lawn to reach the east wing, where they’d left Hudson. Meacham told Sturghill about the Daimler. “I cursed it, and it retaliated.”

  “Think what’ll happen when we start tossing Molotovs.”

  “That’s my point. It hears us. I don’t know how much it knows.”

  “We still doing this?”

  “What do you think?”

  “That there’s nothing else to do.”

  “Too true.” Assume the worst, she thought. Assume Rose, or whatever it is at Gethsemane Hall, knows what you’re up to. Don’t give it a chance to counter. If you can. If. Her lip curled. She’d never seen such pathetic grasping at straws.

  The east wing was Handyman Central, special emphasis gardening. Wheelbarrows, hoes, rakes, spades, shears, rope, paint, stacks of wood that looked like a sampler from every fence in England. Workbenches invisible under pyramids of might-be-useful-someday junk. Rotting cardboard boxes of tools new and rusting surrounded by unidentifiable bits and bobs of metal. Jars of nails straight and bent. Scattered heaps of metallic and wooden objects that Meacham thought must have been breeding here on their own. They couldn’t possibly have been made by the hand of man. They had no purpose.

  Hudson had gathered four empty paint cans, a wine bottle grimed with dust, and three of the nail jars. “Is this what you had in mind?” he asked Meacham.

  “None of them are perfect, but we’ll make do. What about tubing?”

  He pointed to a coil of garden hose. “Is that enough?”

  Meacham laughed. “You are the innocent, aren’t you?” She looked around, found a hacksaw. She knocked a pile of junk off a workbench, set the hose on top and cut a section a couple of feet long. “Bring the containers,” she said and headed back outside, walking quickly back to Gray’s car. She unscrewed the gas cap, slipped the hose into the tank, bent to one end, and began to suck. For a moment, she was worried that she would hit the perfect counter: no gas. But then her mouth flooded. She choked and gagged. She felt better than she had in days. She grabbed one of Hudson’s paint cans and put the hose inside. Gas gushed into the can.

  They filled the other containers. The wine bottle might work all right, Meacham thought. The jars, maybe. The paint cans were useless as cocktail shakers. But they could add fuel to the burn. Sturghill found a pile of cleaning rags and tore them into strips. Meacham looked at the arsenal when they were done. “We’re not exactly going to start a revolution with this.”

  Sturghill said, “All we have to do is burn through one barricade.”

  “Are we ready to try this?” The sun was climbing fast. Time was zipping by with so much fun.

  “What about Richard?” Hudson asked.

  The temptation was to leave him. Meacham doubted he would agree to come. He might be worse than a liability. If this were still Geneva, she wouldn’t hesitate. Hindmost to the devil. But those goddamned cancers of responsibility and duty were metastasizing in her gut. They were what had brought her back here to fight something that couldn’t, she now accepted, be fought. At least not by her. She’d done her best, and now she was retreating. The
best victory she could hope for now was an evacuation that brought everyone still alive to safety. Her conscience, she thought, would be able to live with that. “Let’s get him,” she said. “We should all be together, do this thing once. If it works, I’m not betting on a chance at a second strike or a long delay before retaliation.”

  “What if he refuses?” Hudson was watching her with that priest’s eye, judging.

  Screw you, Father. I know you’re not a minister but screw you, anyway. “He will. And we’ll drag him out. Satisfied?”

  Hudson nodded. They left the bombs beside the car and headed back inside. Meacham paused in the outer hall. She thought she heard a voice. She held up a hand for silence, heard it again. It was Gray’s. He was speaking to someone. Who? Pertwee, back and not dead after all? Pertwee, dead but back all the same? She exchanged a look with the other two and made for the Great Hall. Gray was there, sitting at the table. He was leaning forward, keeping his injured back from touching the rear of the chair. He was on a wireless phone. “I realize this is short notice,” he was saying. “I appreciate your willingness to do this. I will, of course, be happy to pay for any additional expense the rush incurs.” He looked up and waved a hand at Meacham. “Yes,” he said into the phone. “That will be fine. Thank you.” He turned the phone off. “Good morning,” he said. He had changed his clothes, but his wounds hadn’t finished scabbing over, and already the arms of his shirt were gathering red stains. He was sitting very gingerly. His greeting was cheerful, but his expression was flat, eyes half-lidded and unreadable.

  “Were you on the phone?” Sturghill demanded.

  “I rather thought I was.”

  “How the hell ...” she began but strode forward, grabbed the phone, turned it on and put it to her ear. The fierce hope on her face died. “Cute,” she said to Gray. “You’re a real asshole, you know that? Where do you get off playing games when we’re in this kind of trouble?”

  Gray frowned. “What are you on about?”

  “It’s dead,” Sturghill told Meacham. “Bastard’s talking to his imaginary friends.”

  “There is nothing wrong with that phone,” Gray said. He snatched it from her hands, turned its speaker on. The Holy Grail sound of a dial tone filled the Hall. Sturghill’s eyes bugged. She took the phone back. It went silent.

  “Oh, funny,” Sturghill said. “Humour. Rose,” she called, “you’re a hilarious bitch, and Hell’s too good for you.” She tossed the phone onto the table.

  “Dead for us,” Meacham commented.

  “Yup.”

  Gray sighed, took the phone, turned it on again. Dial tone. “All right, then. I’ll dial. Whom should I call?”

  Good question, Meacham thought. The police? The Archbishop of Canterbury? Who had the best chance of hauling their sorry asses out of here? No one did. But the need for other people was there, the belief that sheer numbers would rescue them. Call for the cavalry. Call in the authorities. Too bad you are the authorities, eh girl? “The local police,” she decided. “Ask for DCI Kate Boulter.” I’ll explain the problem, she thought. Boulter would believe, she was pretty sure. Have her bring in heavy artillery. Platoons of bulldozers to cut that forest down to size.

  Gray punched buttons. The phone beeped at each press. He was halfway through the number when the beeps stopped. He hesitated, pushed the last digit a few more times, held the phone to his ear. “Dead,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Sturghill muttered.

  “I shouldn’t worry,” Gray told her. “I imagine DCI Boulter will be along sooner or later.” He smiled.

  “What do you mean?” Meacham asked, worried again by his cold cheerfulness.

  “We’re going to be having company,” he said.

  She should have been happy. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Other people to be around. But not summoned by a Gray who was not as concerned as he should be, who didn’t seem to be frightened at all, and whose sunny disposition was nothing more than a plastic turn of the lips. “Who was that you were talking to?” she asked.

  At the same time, Hudson demanded, “What have you done?”

  Gray answered him. “I’ve been sending out invitations. We’re going to have a party.”

  In the distance, Meacham heard the growl of a diesel engine.

  Art Gifford had never been on the grounds of Gethsemane Hall. His father had, in the early days of Gifford & Son Rentals, back when the “& Son” of the firm’s name was an affectionate gesture towards a young boy many years yet from joining the family concern. This was decades ago, when the Gray family was still known to have a do from time to time. Hadn’t happened once in Gifford the Younger’s career, and he’d been at this over thirty years now. The name outside the shop still read Gifford & Son, but neither his own son, or, for that matter, his two daughters, had any interest in carrying on the business. The girls were in university, and more power to them. The boy was in a band, but not a proper rock band, thanks all the same. Oh no, he was in something called N-Street, which Gifford knew was referred to in the business as a boy band. Bloody hell. He was making money off screaming ten-year-old girls and coming across as a right ponce. Thank you, Eurovision. Thank you ever so friggin’ much. The group’s one single was everywhere. Gifford had done his best to avoid it, had failed. It was called “River of Love.” Five high male voices harmonizing. The chorus went “Swing high, swing low / That’s the way the river flows.” Gifford did not pretend to be a poet or a man of refined musical ear, but he knew inane when he heard it. So did his mates. They made a point of playing it on the jukebox at the Stag as often as possible. The joke was evergreen, apparently. His cross to bear. And his partner in the business now was Freddie Sandiford. Hardly “& Son.” Sandiford was three years older. No problems with Freddie as far as being the junior partner went, though. Good muscle, but the business sense of a gnat. He knew it, too.

  No worries about Gifford’s legacy this morning. The phone rang him out of bed. Crack of dawn, business not to open for hours yet, his answer had not been welcoming. He’d sharpened up when he heard Richard Gray’s voice. The lord of the manor wanted his services, and sooner than now. Gifford lived above the shop. He’d stormed downstairs, calling Sandiford on his mobile. He was lucky: the lorry was already loaded with what he needed, and he didn’t have to wait for Sandiford to be off and running. He was eager with the honour. He didn’t think about how much his eagerness was simply the need to answer the lure of Gethsemane Hall. He’d lived with the tug a long time, had learned to be suspicious of it. But first thing in the morning, startled awake, big commission on offer, he’d forgotten to be suspicious.

  Even now, he was feeling good as he manoeuvred the truck down the narrow drive. The gate had opened for him without his having to climb out of the cab and ring. Gray must have heard his vehicle’s approach. Wasn’t the quietest beast, truth be told. Nor the smallest. Negotiating the drive’s descent was difficult. The forest pressed close and dark. Gifford had the odd impression of being a bubble moving through water, with the woods opening before him and closing again as he passed. Then he emerged from the woods and pulled into the gardens, and there were people running toward him. He recognized Gray’s friend Patrick Hudson and two of those shit-disturbers from out of town. They were staring at his vehicle as if he’d mounted rocket launchers. The younger of the two women reached his door as he was coming to a stop. She didn’t even let him open the door before she demanded, “How did you get in?”

  “How’d you think?” Nutter.

  The older woman was looking back up the drive. When she spoke, her voice was calmer, but she looked just as stricken as the other two. “More to the point,” she said, “how are you planning on leaving again?”

  When you encounter a nutcase, you don’t give them the time of day. You certainly don’t act on their suggestions. Gifford had ignored plenty of street loons in his day, gazing straight ahead and blanking out the raving. That was what he should have done here. Instead,
like a fool, he looked in his rear-view mirror. And didn’t the forest look like it had closed back over the road? Rubbish. He climbed down from his cab and walked around to the rear of the trailer.

  “Why are you here?” the woman asked.

  “I’m providing the tent and such, aren’t I.”

  “Tent?” said Hudson.

  Were they all raving? “For the party.”

  “Party,” the older woman repeated, the word rasping like sandpaper in her throat. She’d turned a greyer pale.

  Gifford was becoming lonely for sane company. The freaky three here hadn’t managed to dissipate the elated relief he felt in finally being here, but they were working on it. And where was Sandiford? He couldn’t unload and set up by himself, and he didn’t trust these characters to help out in a useful way.

  Sound of a car engine. Gifford looked up the drive hopefully. There it came: Sandiford’s farting old Cortina. Gifford blinked. His eyes were being tricksy. It looked as if the forest had spat out the car, then closed up again.

  Meacham watched the two men begin to set up tables and a marquee tent. Her heart sinking further every second (and she wondered how that was possible), she walked back into the Hall. Gray was still making calls. She stood in front of him until he put the phone down and gave her his full attention. “Why?” she asked.

  “I want to share.”

  chapter twenty-one

  rsvp

  The call descended on Roseminster. It began with the phones. Then the virus mutated. The contagion spread through conversations, emails, text messages. By midday, flyers had appeared. They multiplied in mailboxes, on telephone poles and on lamp standards. Gethsemane Hall had been inviting the people of Roseminster in for a chat and a cuppa for centuries. For the first time, the request was made formal and flesh. The tug was irresistible. It had been growing very strong since the death of Pete Adams. Now Richard Gray had added his voice, insisting on the pleasure of everyone’s company.