The Vanishment

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  For the next three hours we walked hand in hand among graves and flowers, shaded by tall, semitropical trees, along paths dappled with ferns. Set down in the middle of such lush vegetation, the little stone church looked out of place, a very English building in what seemed a foreign field. But the names on the lichen-covered graves and the inscriptions on the little stones that flanked the paths could not have been more English.

  We sat beneath a tall Lebanon cedar, watching the sun shift on the deep water of the creek. I had brought sandwiches and coffee for lunch. Sometimes the voices of other visitors would drift across to us, then the silence would close in again. A chaffinch flew past and landed softly on the branch of a tall myrtle. There were birds everywhere. The air was full of birdsong and the buzzing of bees. Butterflies danced in pools of sunlight.

  "How wonderful if I could be buried here/ whispered Sarah. She was leaning back against my chest with her eyes closed. I ran a slow finger back and forth across her lips. 'So much nicer than . ..' She shivered. "Well, wherever it is I'll wind up."

  "I thought you were going to be cremated. And put in the jar with Brian." Brian had been our cat. He had died two years before and Sarah had kept his ashes in a biscuit tin on the mantelpiece. She said we were all to be mingled one day and sprinkled on Hampstead Heath.

  "Well, we could be sprinkled here, I suppose."

  "I'm not sure they'd take very kindly to having a cat on their roses."

  "They needn't know."

  "A heathen, then. You might contaminate the place."

  "It was just a thought. I almost envy them all." She glanced up the hill at the old graves. "Being part of this. Sleeping here."

  There was nothing morbid in her tone. Just a subdued awe to find that death could be turned into such a gentle thing. I knew what she was thinking, though. She was thinking about Catherine, our daughter, about her small flower-covered grave in London. It seemed so long ago now. So long ago, so sudden, so unnecessary.

  I stopped thinking about it. If Sarah could find comfort here, so could I. It was only a matter of making room.

  We finished our lunch and took another slow walk, returning at last to the creek, where we sat by the water's edge. Sarah talked about returning here to paint. I had brought my camera. We took photographs of each other. I have them still. We are happy in them, smiling, content with life.

  We spent the late afternoon in Falmouth and had dinner there. It was late when we finally got back. We were greeted by the sound of the sea and the silent, shadowed shape of Petherick House against the night sky. We were ready for our first night inside.

  Chapter 3

  I did what I could to keep Sarah's spirits high. I found wood in an outhouse and succeeded in lighting a fire in our drab bedroom. The flames made the room almost cheerful, and the warmth was welcome, driving away as it did some of that unseasonal cold and damp. It seemed hard to believe that we had spent the day in such glorious summer weather.

  "I want to go home," Sarah said when she came upstairs, before we undressed for bed.

  "Home? But I thought you'd got over that."

  "I thought so as well. But I can't stay here. Truly I can't."

  "What's wrong with it? Really. Other than this . . . feeling?"

  "I don't know. Don't you see, that's the problem? I feel this way, and I know I shouldn't, and it unsettles me."

  "Well, it may not be so bad in the morning. You're tired. It's been a long day. We can go back to Roseland anytime you want."

  "Perhaps," she said, but I could see she was not convinced. Her hair was dark, the color of polished wood, and she let it fall over her shoulders like a shawl. I reached out my hand and touched it. It was soft.

  Several times that night I woke and found Sarah awake in the bed beside me, first on her back, then on her side, now upright.

  "Can't you sleep?"

  She took her time answering. In the interval, I could hear the sea rolling outside.

  "No," she said. "I keep thinking. I can't stop thinking about it."

  "It?"

  "The house. About this house. I think about one room, then the next, until I've been through them all. And then I start again, all over, from the beginning."

  "You should try sheep instead."

  "It isn't funny, Peter. Something happened here. In one of these rooms."

  After that, I did not sleep either. Dawn found us still in bed, wide-awake, like children on Christmas morning. The fire had died out.

  Sometimes, there are more dreams than I can bear. Sometimes, the night is thick with them, so thick I wake choking and am taken down again in wave after wave of breathlessness. In time, I recover wakefulness and pull myself upright in bed, for I know I cannot sleep again. Or, rather, that I will not. I prefer not to, I know what I will encounter if I do. You can hear things in dreams, see things, touch things—things best left alone, things best forgotten.

  * * *

  There was bright sun all that day again. We breakfasted early to the sound of birds. The central heating had begun to make an impact on the rooms, taking the chill off the air. Throughout the meal I steered what little conversation there was on to neutral topics—places I thought we should put on our itinerary, the prospects for good weather, whether or not we should go shopping for fresh food that afternoon. Tired of my own voice, I switched on the radio. A deejay was babbling mindlessly on Radio One, but his cheery voice and the undemanding music he played were exactly what we needed.

  After breakfast, we went straight out to the garden. Sarah's mood lifted almost at once, returning to what it had been the day before. It was already warm outside, and sunlight had woven itself into everything. At the rear of the house, a daisy-speckled lawn ran gently down to the cliff, at whose foot the sea lay, breathing dangerously. A scattering of jagged rocks guarded the cliff face against the waves, as though dropped there on purpose.

  We stood at the edge together, holding hands, watching the tide come in. The house stood behind us, not quite forgotten, but pushed aside for a while. The rug still lay where we had left it. An army of sea gulls dipped and soared around us, lifting from the wrinkled surface of the waves, turning and vanishing into the blue sky. I drew back from the edge, made nervous by the beating of the sea against those black, glistening rocks. Sarah followed me without a word.

  I found two folding chairs and set them on the lawn, a white table between. On the table I placed a jug of fruit juice and ice, with glasses. Sarah said nothing more about leaving, or about her feelings of the night before, and I did not prompt her.

  We took lunch on the lawn: tuna and corned-beef sandwiches washed down with hot coffee. Afterward, Sarah stretched out on a recliner and fell asleep, exhausted by the night's vigil. Curiously, I did not feel tired, but invigorated, woken up by the sun and the sea breeze. I was like someone who has spent years in solitary confinement, who has not felt the sun on his face or smelled fresh air for almost as long as he can remember. I brought a pen and paper from the car and made a start on a story I had been mulling over on the way down.

  I surprised myself. By the time I put the pen down, it was midafternoon and I had written half a dozen pages. I reread them and was pleased to find the results better than I had expected. The best thing I had written in ages. The real thing for once.

  At that moment Sarah woke up screaming.

  The sound ripped me from my reading. She was sitting bolt upright on the recliner, eyes open, staring, hands thrust out as though to ward off an unseen attacker. I knocked back my chair as I stood and rushed to her side.

  "Sarah, what is it? Are you all right?"

  She looked at me for a moment as though she did not recognize me, then took three or four deep breaths and lowered her hands to the base of the recliner, pressing hard against it for balance. I reached out for her, touching her gently, though I sensed on her part a reluctance to be touched.

  "It was a dream," she said. "I had a dream."

  At that moment she looked around toward
the house. I saw her shiver as she did so. By ill chance, a cloud chose that instant to cross the sun, sending a streak of dark shadow across the lawn and down onto the rear of the building.

  "We have to go," she said. "We have to leave."

  "Leave?" I retorted, as though stung. "We can't leave. There's no question of leaving."

  "You don't understand. It's what I said. The house— "

  'There’s nothing wrong with the house, Sarah. This place is all we expected. Sunny, quiet, restful. I've done more work this afternoon than I've sometimes done in an entire month in London. Better work, too. At this rate I'll have the book half finished by the time we go home."

  "No, Peter, we have to go now. Before something happens."

  "Happens? Nothing's going to happen. You're just frightening yourself for nothing. You can paint if you like, go for walks, get a boat—whatever you like. But I'm staying here to write. Every day if I can."

  "Then I'll go home alone."

  I took my hand away from her, the hand with which I had been stroking her shoulders.

  "Fine," I said. "Do that." I hesitated, knowing that what I said next would be crucial, a watershed perhaps. "But don't expect me to come after you. Not now, not later. Do you understand?"

  She understood. Whatever the dream had done to her, my words went deeper. I was offering her a choice, a bastard choice. She could let her fears get the better of her, slip away to London, escape whatever it was she dreaded here, but it would be the beginning of the end of our marriage. Or she could decide to save the marriage by staying here and fighting it. It was a cruel choice, and I am not proud of having forced it on her. Not in view of what happened later. But I had no way of knowing. Not then.

  She said nothing. All her energies were reserved for the struggle going on inside her. Partly, it was a struggle with the house; partly, one with me. I won, or at least I was given the appearance of winning. Sarah got up and walked down to the lawn's edge, where she sat for a long time, watching the sea. A boat went slowly past, a red smudge against the waves.

  That night I worked late in the study, making rapid progress with my story. It would be finished by the next day if all went well.

  Sarah was in the drawing room, painting. She had brought daylight bulbs and set up lamps alongside her easel. I was under strict orders not to enter the room while she was working. My scrutiny made her nervous, she said. I was happy to comply.

  I stopped work at eleven. Sarah was already in the kitchen, preparing hot drinks. She seemed more relaxed. On reflection, I understood in part her sense of unease concerning the house. It was, after all, far from the most cheerful of dwellings, even in this, its modern phase. How it might have been fifty or one hundred years ago, I shuddered to imagine. And in the winter it must be bleak enough, its rooms permanently chilled, touched with damp.

  There were three stories. Downstairs consisted of the rooms I have mentioned, and there was also a toilet. The next floor had four bedrooms, including our own, and two bathrooms; the remaining three bedrooms were on the upper story, with two smaller bathrooms. Old carpet, old wallpaper everywhere: the house had not been redecorated since the 1950s or earlier. Our bedroom looked out onto the garden at the back, and to the sea beyond. The bed creaked. A tap in the bathroom dripped.

  We went to bed around midnight. I was tired at last, yet buoyed up by my achievements of the day.

  "How did your painting go?" I asked as we settled into bed.

  "Well. Very well. As you say, this is a good place to work. Things get done."

  "I'm pleased. But today wasn't much of a success, was it? I thought things were going well yesterday."

  She was silent for a while.

  "You've got some work done. It's what you wanted."

  "Nevertheless."

  I stroked her cheek. The sheets were still a little damp, but Sarah's body beside me was warm, even hot. My hand stroked her flank, and I felt her go rigid briefly, then relax. I continued stroking, and she sighed audibly. The sheet slipped down below her breasts, and I leaned over, kissing her. She did not try to stop me.

  It was not like that last time, on the lawn. Sarah kept her eyes shut from start to finish. Outside, she had been free of all inhibition; here, it was as if we were being watched or overheard.

  Afterward, we listened to the sea. I imagined it in the darkness, always moving. Not melodic as before, but out of tune and sinister.

  Sarah held my hand.

  "I've been here before," she said.

  The words were almost a whisper. I asked her what she meant. But she did not answer. She let go of my hand and turned on her side and switched off the light.

  When I woke later that night, she was sitting upright again. I did not ask what she was doing. I knew. In her mind, she was making her way from room to room, all through the silent house.

  Chapter 4

  Day followed day, night succeeded night, and the weather did not change, did not even falter. Each day Sarah took her easel down to the cliff edge, where she painted endlessly, sometimes from early morning to late afternoon, without flagging. The finished products of her labor were stored under sheets in one of the second-floor bedrooms. She promised to reveal them only when we were back in London. It would be a surprise, she said, part of my homecoming.

  I wrote as I had never written before. Each morning I typed up the work of the previous day, refining and editing it, and each afternoon, after a brief rest outside in the garden, I would take up my pen again and write ten, eleven, twelve pages without so much as a pause. I worked in the study for the most part, seated in front of a French window that gave onto the garden. Old, discarded ideas were taken out and dusted off; in the peace and quiet of those golden days, they quickly came back to life. I felt as though I had become a magician, as though all I touched was in a matter of moments gold. I had never written so well or so easily, and every day I woke anxiously, fearing that the facility might have left me as readily as it had come, only to find it waiting there in the study, quietly, without fail.

  In the soft evenings, Sarah and I would drive in to Tredannack, to the Green Dragon pub. The landlord recognized me and made us welcome. I soon learned that he was not a local, but a Plymouth man, a former sailor who had retired early and come to Tredannack with a young wife, to indulge a long-postponed dream of life as a country innkeeper.

  There were a few outsiders like ourselves, summer folk who rented cottages in the village or parked their caravans nearby. They came from Birmingham and Manchester, sunless northern towns, and we found them a dull bunch on the whole. Back home, they sold cars or insurance or double glazing, and their conversation was limited to house prices, the crime rate, and the tribulations of the Royal Family, of whom they spoke with the familiarity of close friends.

  From long experience, I knew better than to let myself be drawn into the subject of my own work. I said what I always say, that I was a civil servant— something I had indeed been at one time—and mentioned a dull department on the third floor of an office in Brentford. No one inquired further. I was a pencil pusher, one of the innumerable faceless minions to whom their forms and reports were passed.

  By the third evening, we had decided to progress to the locals, only to find ourselves met by a blank wall. They were not overtly rude—not at first—but they made it wholly clear that they wanted nothing to do with us. Now at one table, now at another, we were snubbed again and again, and in the end we stopped trying and settled for our own company. I thought at first it was no more than the usual and forgivable resistance of residents to contact with seasonal visitors. But from time to time I would catch sight of one of our friends from the north playing darts with a team of local lads or ordering a round for one or another circle of Tredannack worthies. If there was a ban, it started and ended with us.

  There was no alternative to the Green Dragon. It was all the pub and all the nightlife in the whole of Tredannack, and for what it was worth, we felt ourselves entitled to some company in t
he evenings. It kept Sarah away from the house for one thing, and I was grateful for that. And the beer was good, a heady local brew that made a fitting end to a hard day's writing. I had started to look forward to it.

  So we sat it out for two more nights. From time to time we would notice eyes straying in our direction, then away again. We had not become invisible, then. New arrivals entering the lounge would glance around, spying out their friends; without fail, their eyes would rest on us for a moment or two, warily, before moving on.

  Late on the second evening of cold shoulders and odd looks—our fifth at the pub—I went up to the bar to fetch fresh drinks for us both: another pint of Polyphant's Old Cornish Regular for myself, a Tanqueray gin for Sarah. The landlord served me as usual, but I thought he, too, glanced at me oddly. I could hold back no longer.

  "What is it, Ted?" I asked. "People have been treating us like lepers for the past two nights. Don't tell me we've got BO."

  He set the brimming pint glass on the bar and turned to fetch a tumbler for Sarah's gin.

  "They're odd buggers round here," he said, keeping his voice low. "I'd pay no heed to them if I were you."

  "But I can't help paying heed. They give us queer glances, they make it clear we're pariahs of some sort."

  "You're from outside. I had a hard enough time of it myself when I first came here."

  "Don't give me that," I said. "Look at them. They're happy enough to pass the time of day with that riffraff from the caravans. Don't tell me they've got a special phobia of Londoners."

  He filled the gin glass with tonic.

  "Ice?"

  "Yes, please."

  He spooned some in and added a wedge of lemon. I passed a five-pound note across the bar and he gave me my change.

  "It's not you," he said. "It's the house you're staying in. Some local thing. I can't get to the bottom of it. People clam up if you mention it."