Hiding From the Light

by Barbara Erskine

  Biting her lip, she craned between two branches, her vivid blue eyes focused intently on the figure under the trees.

  He was feeling his way. After a while he turned back towards the road, then he stopped and looked straight at her even though she knew he couldn’t see her. She was wearing a dark green T-shirt and black jeans which must have blended into the shadows, and yet – she held her breath. Yes, he was a sensitive. That would be dangerous in a man of the church, although in her admittedly somewhat limited experience, those were rare these days.

  She heard the wren in the ivy near her, saw him spot the bird and watch it for a moment, smiling to himself, then he was on his way over the wall and out into the lane. He did not even glance in her direction.

  Silently she whispered a thank you to the little bird which had taken his attention. It paused, cocked its head in her direction, bobbed a quick acknowledgement and it was gone.

  She gave him a minute or two to get well down the lane, then she made her way to the crumbling part of the wall where it was easy to climb in. The atmosphere, usually, thanks largely to her efforts, so placid and dreamlike, was uncomfortable, the air tense and jumpy. She made her way slowly towards a rough patch of grass where lichen and moss had grown over the foundations of the long-fallen wall. It was near here she felt Hopkins most strongly, the man whose evil haunted her life. It wasn’t the grave, of course, but too many people had thought it was even after the church was finally demolished, the graveyard destroyed, the land deconsecrated. Especially after it was deconsecrated. Their thoughts, their fears, their excitement and their malice had congealed into a tangible weight of sorrow and fear. Most of the time she could contain it. She knew the ways. Counter spell and spell. Prayer. Binding charms. They all worked if one knew what one was doing; all prevented the reality manifesting from the thought. As long as nothing – no one – upset the balance.

  Glancing round to make doubly sure no one was there, she fished in the pocket of her jeans for a small pouch. In it were dried herbs. Herbs gathered from the garden at Liza’s. Carefully she scattered the dusty leaves around the inside of the walls before going back to the centre, where she crouched down on the ground and scraped a small hole amongst the grasses with her fingernail. She tucked the pins and the small piece of knotted thread into the soil and covered them, rearranging the grass around the place. In seconds all signs of her intervention had gone. Standing up again she wandered over to a tree stump where for a moment she sat down, the sun on her back. She could hear the bees humming in the flowers nearby. They were calm now, their agitation soothed. If she listened she could hear their gossip, the hive memory, relayed down the years …

  The garden had been smaller in Cromwell’s time, enclosed within a picket fence, the small neat beds in summer a riot of undisciplined bounty. Fruit and flowers, herbs and vegetables, all crammed into the spaces between the gravel paths where yet more herbs had seeded in a riot of colour. Marigold and feverfew, dandelion and hyssop, thyme and marjoram. Liza made her way slowly between the rosemary bushes, her basket in her hand, plucking a sprig here, a leaf there as the sun dried the dew and the plant oils began to release their scents into the morning air. She woke at dawn on these summer mornings, glad to lever her aching bones from her bed. As her body bent and grew frail the pain became more intense. It was hard to look up now, the curve of her back was so pronounced. Hard to look at the sky, to see the sun, to watch the birds fly over. Her knowledge and experience of remedies and medicines was of little use to her now. Nothing she did seemed to help. Only the sunshine, with its blessed warmth shining down on her eased her a little. She crooned a greeting to the old cat sitting on the path ahead of her and it rose, coming to rub against her legs, before sitting once more in the patch of sunlight and lifting a fastidious paw to wash its left ear.

  She needed horehound and pennyroyal and thyme for young Jane Butcher who was near her time. It would be a long and painful birth if she was any judge. The child in her belly was huge – the babe taking after its father, John Butcher, a large man whose two earlier wives had both died in child bed. Why didn’t he choose a woman with broad hips and meaty thighs like his own? Why did he pick such little child-wives with such narrow bones? She shook her head sadly. Jane was terribly afraid. And with reason. Liza passed on amongst her plants. She needed hyssop and blackberry leaves for her neighbour’s sore throat and a poultice for Sir Harbottle Grimstone’s cowman who had a cut on his hand which was swollen and yellow with undischarged pus. She sighed. They paid well, her customers, and she was happy to help them with their pain, but sometimes she wished there was someone who would help her. Someone to bring her warm soothing possets in the evening, someone to help her change her old woollen gown when the ache in her arms made her cry as she tried to pull it over her head, someone who would take over the garden for her before it ran riot for the last time and took her by the throat and strangled her. She gave a hoarse chuckle at the thought. As long as the plants survived she supposed it was all right. They didn’t need to be as neat as they were when she had first planted out her little medicinal garden. And they would probably outlive her. And Sarah came when she could with a basket of food or a warm shawl or a jug of ale. Sarah, daughter of the manor, her suckling child, the little girl who had replaced her own dead baby at her breast. She pulled her small shears out of her pocket and snipped and cut and tugged at the leaves until the basket was overflowing.

  The cat had followed her. It stopped near a patch of catnip and threw itself headfirst into the clump, rolling ecstatically amongst the aromatic leaves and she chuckled again.

  On a shelf in the cottage she kept the utensils of her trade meticulously neat. Pestle and mortar, bowls, scoops and jugs, all washed and drained and clean. Baskets and bags of dried herbs hung on hooks from the ceiling beams and boxes were stacked carefully on a table in the corner. She set her basket of fresh pickings down on the table and went to check the fire. The iron pot of water hanging over the coals was nearly boiling.

  Jane Butcher’s medicine first.

  She worked on for a long time, conscious that the beam of sunlight coming through the kitchen door was moving steadily across the floor. Soon the sun would move round into the south and her kitchen would be shadowy again and cool. Squinting at the jug in her hand she tried to work faster. Once the sun had gone it was harder to see what she was doing and more and more often the thick black tinctures which came from her pots would spill across the scrubbed oak of her table.

  Once she stopped and stared at the door, listening. Had that been someone at the gate? She could hear the high-pitched alarm call of a mother bird telling her young to hide low in the nest – acry understood and acted on by every other bird in the garden. Perhaps it was the old cat which was causing such consternation. His roll in the catnip might have rejuvenated him enough to stalk a bird but somehow she doubted it. She frowned. Her hearing was still acute even if her eyes were growing dim. In the silence of the garden she could hear menace. Slowly putting down her jug and spoon she hobbled to the door and stood looking out. There was no one to be seen. The lane was empty. There was no sign of the cat. But somewhere something was wrong.

  Then she saw him, the man standing half hidden in the shade of the old pear tree in the hedge and she recognised him. It was one of Hopkins’s servants. She stared at him for a moment, puzzled. Why was he watching her? Seeing her turn towards him he drew back into the shadows and she saw him clench his fists into the sign against the evil eye before he turned and fled, and in spite of the warmth of the sun across her shoulders and the scents of the herbs around her she suddenly smelled the cold breath of fear.

  6

  Pulling her MG into the car park near the Co-op Emma crawled slowly between tightly packed rows of cars trying to find a space. ‘Better to park there and walk up to the shop,’ the house agent had said. ‘There’s no parking along the High Street here and not much anywhere on a Saturday.’

  How right he was. The place was teemi
ng. Someone backed out in front of her and she turned into the space with relief. She was exhausted. It had been a two-hour drive from London – a drive starting with a row with Piers …

  ‘I’m sorry. I told you yesterday, I am not going off on some wild goose chase to see a cottage I don’t want in a county I don’t like on a weekend I want to stay at home!’

  He had been furious when she confessed she had rung the agent that morning at nine a.m.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It is Liza’s.’ The young man’s voice had been hoarse, as though he had a bad cold. ‘Yes, it is still on the market. There’s been a lot of interest, but no one has made a definite offer yet. Yes, you could view it today.’

  ‘Liza’s.’ She had repeated the name to herself as she hung up. ‘Liza’s Cottage.’

  Will Fortingale, the young man at the estate agent’s, did indeed have a bad cold. His nose was red and swollen and he was clutching a large handkerchief as he opened the filing cabinet and pulled out a folder of particulars and a bunch of keys.

  ‘Do you know how to find it?’ He withdrew a couple of stapled sheets of A4 and handed them to her.

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Right. Well. It’s not occupied, so they won’t mind you looking round it on your own. You don’t want me to go with you?’ He glanced up anxiously and she saw the relief in his eyes as she shook her head. He had summed her up as she walked through the door. He could always tell a serious buyer and Emma Dickson wasn’t a serious buyer. There was no point in trying too hard with this sale, especially as he was feeling so damn rotten.

  She waited whilst he scribbled down some instructions for her, found and photocopied a local map, handed her the keys, then she was out in the street again.

  She did not remember Manningtree at all. She stood outside the agent’s shop and stared round in delight. It was a pretty town, the centre consisting as far as she could see of little more than the narrow, busy main road in which she was standing with a couple of other streets crossing it at right angles. She squinted at the map in her hand. She was standing on the corner of Church Street. South Street ran parallel with it fifty yards or so along. All were hung with flower baskets – old houses and shops alike decorated with fuchsia and geraniums, lobelia and ivy. She pressed back against the wall as a car swept by and hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should have a cup of coffee somewhere before going on to see the house. She had left home without having any breakfast, and she had been on the road so long she was feeling quite weak. Besides, she was, she realised, suddenly a little apprehensive about finally going inside the house whose keys were clutched in her hand. The whole enterprise had acquired an emotional overload which had begun to alarm her.

  She could see a coffee house from where she was standing outside an empty shop, its windows whitewashed, a For Sale notice hanging from the jettied storey above the front door. As she stood hesitating the door opened and a man came out. Talking hard and looking over his shoulder back into the shop he cannoned into her violently, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry!’ He grabbed her arm and steadied her as she staggered into the gutter, the cottage keys flying out of her hand. ‘Oh shit! Let me get those. Have I hurt you? Come and sit down a minute.’

  Before she knew it she had been drawn through the door into the empty shop and pushed into a folding canvas chair.

  ‘I’m OK, honestly.’ She had finally got her breath back enough to speak.

  ‘No you’re not, look at your foot!’

  She looked down at her sandalled feet. Below her pink jeans her ankle looked a bit swollen and was already distinctly black. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks, honestly.’ She was overwhelmed and not a little embarrassed by his concern. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  The man who was now kneeling at her feet was tall and wiry, probably like her in his mid-thirties. Dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt he had short cropped dark hair and a long, rather mournful face. ‘It doesn’t look fine to me. I am a clot. I never look where I’m going. Colin, do something!’

  Emma had not even realised there was someone else in the room. The man who now stood forward was shortish and solidly built with pepper-and-salt hair, perhaps in his mid-forties. He grinned at her peaceably.

  ‘My colleague is always flattening people and I constantly find myself picking them up!’ His voice had the unmistakable singsong of the Welsh hills. ‘Would you like a doctor, an ambulance, a bandage, a lawyer or a cup of coffee?’

  Emma burst out laughing. ‘I’ll settle for a coffee. That is where I was heading when we bumped into each other.’

  ‘God, that’s tactful!’ The younger man straightened up. ‘Bumped into each other! I completely bulldozed you.’

  ‘You’re forgiven!’ Emma was rubbing her foot. ‘Much as I’m enjoying the sympathy this is not a bruise, you know. It’s actually dirt.’

  ‘Off my great clumping shoes.’ The younger man looked down at his feet ruefully. ‘This place is filthy.’

  ‘I’ll fetch us some coffee while Mark looks after you.’ The Welshman fished in his pocket for some change. ‘We have made an arrangement with the café next door. They will let us bring real cups across here and they have nice home-made cakes and buns.’ He winked.

  ‘Are you buying this shop?’ Emma looked round for the first time as he disappeared out into the street. The man she now knew as Mark shook his head. ‘God, no. In fact I gather the shop is almost unsaleable.’ There was another folding chair in the room beside the one in which Emma was seated, and two large metal cases of what looked like cameras and photographic equipment, a heavy coil of cable, two large canvas bags and a spotlight on a tripod. Uneven oak floorboards covered in dusty footmarks and heavily beamed walls and ceiling proclaimed the age of the building. In the far corner a broad flight of stairs led up out of sight. There was an ugly modern counter to one side of them, bare but for a couple of notebooks, two empty coffee cups – presumably from the obliging café next door – pen, light meter and clipboard.

  ‘You’re photographers?’ Emma waggled her foot experimentally.

  ‘Film. TV.’ Mark turned to his briefcase and pulled out a pack of Kleenex. He proffered it hopefully. ‘Will this help clean you up? Or there’s a loo upstairs.’

  ‘Actually I might go up and wash my hands.’ She pulled herself to her feet with a wince.

  ‘Straight up. You can’t miss it.’ He grinned. It was his lucky day. A beautiful woman, literally, falling at his feet!

  Glancing into the upper room from the landing at the top of the stairs she saw that it was large and empty, the windows leaded and dusty. A bluebottle was beating against one of the panes and on the floor below the sill she could see the bodies of several others. She shivered. In spite of the frenzied buzzing of the fly there was a strange stillness in the room which was unnerving.

  She found the cloakroom, cleaned off most of the dust, washed her hands and was making her way back towards the empty room when she heard someone walking across the floor towards the staircase. She paused in the doorway, looking round. ‘Mark?’

  There was no answer. ‘Mark, are you there?’ The room was empty. The bluebottle was lying on its back on the window sill, spinning feebly in circles. She stepped cautiously into the room. ‘Hello? Is there anyone here?’

  The silence was intense, as though someone was holding their breath, listening.

  ‘Mark? Colin?’ She stared round nervously. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

  There was no answer.

  Retreating to the top of the stairs she glanced back towards the window and caught her breath in surprise. There was someone there, surely. A stooped figure, staring at her across the pile of boxes in the middle of the floor.

  Welcome back.

  The words seemed to hang in the air.

  For a moment she couldn’t move, her eyes locked onto the pale, indistinct face, then a child shouted suddenly in the street below and the moment was over. The figure w
as gone – a mere trick of the light – the room was empty.

  She felt a knot of fear tightening in her chest. Sternly she dismissed it. Hurrying downstairs she limped towards her chair and flung herself down in it, shaken. ‘You weren’t upstairs just now, were you?’

  Mark glanced up from the notebook he was writing in. ‘No. Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I thought I heard someone up there.’ Cautiously she began to rub her ankle.

  He scrutinised her face for a moment. ‘Really?’

  She nodded. ‘It was a bit spooky, to be honest!’ She gave a small apologetic laugh. ‘It was probably my imagination. Did you say you were making a film here?’

  Mark nodded. ‘A documentary.’

  ‘And what is so special about this place? I mean, I can see it’s very old and attractive, but presumably that’s not enough to warrant a film?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘No. Well, as I think you might have guessed, it’s part of a series on haunted buildings.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘You weren’t thinking of buying it, were you?’ He nodded towards the keys lying next to her bag. The estate agent’s tag was large and obvious.

  She shivered ostentatiously. ‘Good Lord, no. I was on my way to see a country cottage.’ She frowned uncertainly. ‘Perhaps I’m going mad, but I think I might have seen your ghost up there. A figure, by the window. Does that sound likely?’

  Mark stared. ‘It’s possible. What did it look like?’

  ‘Sort of wan and transparent!’

  He grinned. ‘Sounds fairly authentic. I’m jealous. I haven’t seen a thing yet.’

  ‘It could have been a trick of the light.’

  ‘True.’ He was watching her closely.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘So, who is this ghost?’ And quite suddenly she didn’t want to know. She quite desperately didn’t want to know. But it was too late. Mark was launching into his story.