by Sarah Rayne
The garden hose was spurting water on to the fire, but every time it got close enough to do any good the rubber began to melt from the intense heat. There was smoke everywhere – huge black clouds of it, and lumps of burning timber and charred wood were falling on to the garden. In the distance Lucy heard the wail of the fire engine, and looked up hopefully because perhaps it would all be all right after all. But the fire station was miles away – it was on the other side of the town, and when Lucy remembered this she did not think the firemen would get here in time.
Through the steam and the smoke she could see the bare roof timbers now, like the bones of a skeleton sticking out through a dead body. There were two of the nightmare roasting-apple heads at the window now, and the screaming was going on and on, all mixed up with the crackling fire and the spluttering hosepipe and the dreadful bones of the house, and the really terrible part was that it was starting to become annoying, that screaming, so that Lucy wanted to shout to it to shut up…
She sobbed and began to run towards the house, but somebody caught her and held her back. Edmund. Lucy struggled to get away from him but he held her tightly, putting his hands over her ears to stop her hearing the screaming, but Lucy heard it anyway. She heard, as well, Edmund’s voice saying in a horrified whisper, ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy. Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry.’
The fire engine came clanging along the lane, the sirens shrieking, so that if either Mariana or Bruce Trent were still screaming from within the flames, no one could hear them. The firemen ran about, unhooking ladders, and connecting steel hoses to taps, and huge powerful jets of water rained down on the house and clouds of steam rose up. The flames hissed angrily for a few moments, and then died down.
A little night wind had started up, and it blew the billowing smoke straight into Lucy’s face. It was dark heavy smoke and it was laden with something greasy and too-sweet…As the terrible rich scent reached Lucy’s stomach, she pushed Edmund away and was violently sick on to the rain-sodden ground. People came to help her – putting their arms around her, telling her everything would be all right, please not to cry, oh the poor darling child—
Everything would not be all right, of course, because nothing would ever be all right again in the entire world. The world would forever consist of two helpless figures with nightmare heads, screaming as they burned up. Lucy was sick on the grass again, and somebody sponged her face, and somebody else wrapped blankets round her. She tried to stop shaking but could not, and she tried not to look at the house.
And all the while, the night-rain beat ceaselessly down on the burning house and on what lay inside it.
There had to be an enquiry, of course, and there had to be an inquest. Sympathy was extended to Lucy and the rest of the family, and a verdict of accidental death was recorded. It was a terrible tragedy, but it was nobody’s fault, said people. It had been a freak accident – a bizarre sequence of events that could not possibly have been predicted. Perhaps a spark from a faulty bit of electrical wiring had started the fire, or, more probably, someone had carelessly thrown a cigarette down somewhere. It was not very likely that anyone would ever admit to that, however.
One or two people murmured that if only Mariana had not gone running up to the attics and if Bruce had not then chased up there after her, they might still be alive. The top part of the house would still have burned, and anything in the attics would have been lost, but for goodness’ sake, what were some bricks and timber and a few bits of jumble against two people burned alive!
Edmund had told his father what had happened, of course, even though he was not sure if his father entirely understood – you could not always tell these days. Severe clinical depression, the GP had said a few months earlier, summoning Edmund from Bristol University because he had not wanted to have a patient sinking irretrievably into the twilit world of melancholia without somebody in the family being aware of it. He added that the condition had probably been present for years under the surface, although you could never be certain about these things. Oh no, it was nothing anyone could have spotted, Edmund must not blame himself for any of it. Who knew what went on in the minds of even the closest of friends or family? Well, yes, he would have to say that the psychiatric consultant he had called in did think this particular case was progressive, but nil desperandum, because there were treatments and drugs that could help. An institution? Oh dear goodness, they did not need to think about that kind of thing for a long time yet, he said.
The best thing for Edmund to do was to keep his father as much in the ordinary world as possible – there seemed to be this strong tendency to look back on the past, had Edmund noticed that? Well, anyway, cheerfulness, that was the watchword. Edmund should try to keep his father’s mind focused on pleasant things: bits of family news, his own studies, light-hearted events in the world – not that there were many of those these days, eh?
It was difficult to tell if the news of the fire and the deaths of Mariana and Bruce Trent distressed Edmund’s father or not.
‘Everything was burned?’ he kept asking Edmund. ‘In the fire?’
‘Yes. The top floors of the house were ruined.’
There was a long silence, and Edmund could almost feel his father trying to clutch at the rags of his own sanity. It was a relief when he asked a perfectly sane question about Lucy. ‘What will happen to her? Where will she live?’
‘With Bruce Trent’s family, I think.’
‘Not with Deborah?’
‘No. Deborah suggested it, but I think everyone agreed Lucy would be better off with her father’s family. I should think she’ll spend holidays with Deborah, though.’
‘Ah. Yes, of course.’ For a moment Edmund thought his father had sunk back into the dreadful darkness and he was just preparing to leave when his father suddenly said, ‘Deborah would have liked having Lucy with her. Pity about that. But bring Lucy to visit me one day, will you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Edmund surprised.
‘I’d like that. Will she grow up to be like her grandmother, d’you think?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Edmund.
Just before the inquest Edmund said to Lucy that it would be better not to tell anyone about the oil lamp.
Lucy had regarded him with solemn eyes, a little too large for her small face. ‘Not ever?’
‘No,’ said Edmund. ‘Not ever.’
She frowned, and Edmund realized that she was going to say something about it having been Edmund himself who had overturned the lamp – he could feel the thoughts forming in Lucy’s bewildered mind. So, not giving her time to frame the words, he said, ‘Lucy, listen. People might not understand about – about you being up there that night.’ A pause. ‘They might even decide the fire was your fault.’
It was rather dreadful to see the child’s expression change, but it could not be helped. Lucy was a truthful, intelligent child, and anything she said might be believed. No matter how badly Edmund’s plan to get revenge from that condescending bitch Mariana Trent had gone wrong – no matter how appalled he might be at what had happened – he had to cover his tracks.
‘Might I be punished?’ said Lucy after a moment.
‘No. No. I don’t really think anyone would do that,’ said Edmund, making it sound as if he was not absolutely sure. ‘But just in case, it would be better never to tell anyone about being in the attics.’
‘Yes, I see. I won’t ever say anything,’ said Lucy. ‘I promise.’
‘Good girl.’
‘But I thought,’ said Lucy, speaking very carefully as if she was determined not to cry, ‘that the rain would put the fire out. Didn’t you think that, Edmund?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
‘I used to like night rain,’ said Lucy wistfully. ‘Didn’t you? It makes you feel all safe and cosy. And then in the morning everything’s all clean and sparkly and fresh. But I don’t like it now.’
‘I don’t like night rain at all,’ said Edmund.
CHAPTER TWENTY
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br /> There was night rain when Edmund’s father died a few weeks later – a ceaseless downpour that spattered against the windowpanes like bony fingers tapping to get in.
Edmund had spent his early childhood in this house, and he would have said he knew all its moods. He thought he knew the pace at which Time moved through the rooms, although he was already aware that when you were nineteen Time moved at a difference pace than when you were nine. But it would not matter if he lived to be ninety, or a hundred and ninety, the night on which his father died would always be the longest night in the world.
Since the fire his father had slipped further and further away from the normal world. ‘Well, we knew the condition was likely to worsen,’ said the GP when Edmund tentatively pointed this out. ‘And now he’s picked up this bronchial infection, probably because of his low physical state. We’re having a bit of trouble shifting that, in fact I suspect that he’s not taking the antibiotics I’ve prescribed. In view of his mental condition that’s very likely.’
‘Shouldn’t he be in hospital?’
But hospitals, it seemed, were full to brimming with people who were about to die, or who needed urgent operations. Edmund’s father was a comparatively young man – barely past his middle fifties – and he did not need to be carted off to hospital just for a chest infection. But because of the – well, the other problem, he needed to have someone with him, just for the next few days, said the GP. Just to make sure he took his pills, and stayed in bed. It would not be a problem for Edmund to do that?
‘No,’ said Edmund, wondering how many lectures he would miss, and whether he would eventually manage to catch up.
‘Isn’t there anyone you could ask to stay with you to share things a bit? Family, perhaps. Or there are these medical organizations who supply nurses.’
But Edmund did not want any of the family there. Aunt Deborah would certainly come rushing over to help, but Edmund did not want her hearing his father’s wild ramblings, seeing the run-down state of the house, seeing the run-down state of his father. He did not want some gossipy busybody of a nurse there, either. So he said there was no one and that he could manage quite well by himself.
‘All right. Try to get the antibiotics down him – one tablet every four hours – and keep him warm,’ said the GP, preparing to leave. ‘And give him whatever fluids you can. Sweet tea, glucose drinks, fruit juice, anything. He’s quite dehydrated. Oh, and don’t leave him alone, will you?’
‘He’s not violent, is he?’
‘No, but I think his mental state is deteriorating, although that’s not my field. We might need to call one of the on-duty psychiatrists in if he doesn’t improve.’
‘Might he have to be taken to a – a mental hospital?’
‘Let’s not look that far ahead.’ But the GP frowned, as if reassessing Edmund’s comparative youth, and said, ‘Are you sure there’s no one you could contact?’
‘I don’t need anyone. I can cope perfectly well on my own.’
He made up a bed in his old room, and he tried to persuade his father to take the pills left by the GP, and to eat and drink. He was horrified at how much his father had changed in the last few weeks, and how the once tall, once well-built figure had become shrunken and wasted. He’s given up, thought Edmund. He’s given up the fight to remain in the sane world, and I don’t think there’s any way of bringing him back. He realized with sudden surprise that his father was tired of fighting, and that he was grateful to the darkness that was at last pulling him into its deep oblivion.
Edmund only left the bedroom on two or three brief occasions during the evening – once to heat some soup for his father and once to make a glucose drink, both of which his father refused, turning his head away on the pillow. Each time he returned to the room he did so with a beat of apprehension, more than half-expecting to find his father dead. Could you die, purely by wishing it?
Towards midnight the house slid down into a cold and haunted state that no longer seemed to be in the real world but in some desperately lonely wilderness. Was this the place his father had inhabited during all those appalling attacks of melancholia? This silent desolation? Edmund went round the house, turning up all the heating and switching on all the lights, but it did not seem to make much difference. The rooms began to smell of despair and ghosts.
Ghosts…
Shortly before one a.m. his father began the fearful head-turning that Edmund found so eerie. He constantly turned his head this way and that, as if he could sense the presence of something invisible creeping across the room, and as if he was trying to find it, not with his sight, but with his instincts.
‘What’s wrong?’ Edmund had been half dozing in a chair near the window.
‘Did you hear something?’ His father had pushed himself up on the pillows, and there was a feverish colour across his thin cheekbones. Edmund heard with a chill that his father’s voice sounded different. It sounded old. The two antibiotic pills he had managed to get him to swallow had had no effect; his breathing was like the slow creaking of a lump of thick yellowed leather.
‘It’s raining like fury outside,’ said Edmund. ‘I expect that’s what you heard. Try to go back to sleep. Or if I make a cup of tea could you drink it?’
His father shook his head impatiently and dismissively. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Can’t you hear? It sounds like someone creeping up the stairs.’
‘I can’t hear anything—’ He’s hallucinating, thought Edmund. But despite himself he crossed to the partly open bedroom door and looked into the deep well of the stairs. Nothing. He came back and sat on the side of the bed, and his father’s hands reached for him with the sudden frightening strength he sometimes displayed. ‘You imagined it,’ said Edmund. ‘There’s no one here except us.’
‘I’m not imagining it. I’m going to die tonight, Edmund. And they know I am. That’s why they’re here now. That’s what I’m hearing.’
An icy finger traced its way down Edmund’s spine, but he said, ‘They?’
‘The murdered ones. They walk, Edmund – that old belief’s perfectly true. The murdered ones really do walk. That’s why I’ve never been able to forget.’
‘Ashwood,’ said Edmund, softly. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? You were there that day, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was no longer old and sick; it was younger, more vigorous. He’s going back, thought Edmund. In his mind he’s going back to those years.
‘I never forgot what happened that day,’ said this eerily younger voice. ‘That’s the trouble, you see. You think that in time you’ll be able to put it behind you, but you can’t. All the time, for all the rest of your life, you have to watch everything you do and you have to measure everything you say, in case someone finds out…’ He broke off, and Edmund waited, not speaking. ‘I was articled to a firm just outside Ashwood village – you never knew that, did you?’
‘No,’ said Edmund obediently.
‘I’ve never talked about it. Or have I?’ A look of puzzlement crossed the thin face. ‘Have I talked about it, Edmund?’
‘No,’ said Edmund again. No point in saying Deborah had talked about it to him and to Lucy; that she had liked remembering those meetings at Ashwood, which had led to her marriage to the older brother, William Fane.
‘The firm I was articled to did a lot of work for the studios. Contracts for the actors, details on the leasing of the land. It was quite interesting. I used to be taken to Ashwood quite often, to take notes, to gain experience.’
Edmund could feel the memories crowding in, and he could see his father as he must have been in those days: young, charming, eager, his hair the colour of honey with the sun in it, his eyes vividly blue…
‘Lucretia had come to live in England after the war,’ said the voice that was no longer his father’s. ‘I think she had bought a house near to Ashwood – Essex or Sussex, somewhere like that. The first time I saw her I thought I had never seen anyone so beautiful. She was perfect, Edmund –
skin like porcelain or ivory, and that black hair like polished silk. And a shining quality, as if she was perpetually surrounded by light. You didn’t actually see it, but you felt it. She could light up a room just by walking into it. But she was mischievous as well. Come to bed, she said, and I went. It was like being under a spell – I sometimes thought she was a witch, but I would have done anything for her.’
He paused again, his mind still deep in the past. ‘A long time afterwards I married your mother – an old childhood friend, someone I had known all my life. A marriage based on friendship it was, and I thought it might help me to forget. It didn’t, of course. After Lucretia, no other woman could ever—’ Sanity flared in his face, faded away, and then struggled pallidly back, like an electrical current flickering on and off in a thunderstorm. Edmund wanted to tell him not to speak, to try to forget, but his father’s memories were winding their tendrils around his own mind now, pulling him into that same past.
‘That day,’ said his father, ‘that day at Ashwood, I believe I stepped over some kind of invisible line. I crossed a Rubicon or I forded a river somewhere, but whether it was the Jordan river or Charon’s Styx or the measureless sacred Alph, I never knew. But once you’re over that line, Edmund, you can never get back.’ A spasm of coughing wracked him.
‘Try to sleep,’ said Edmund rather helplessly. ‘Everything’s all right.’ But of course it was not all right, because the final strings of sanity were unravelling fast, and his father’s mind was moving beyond anyone’s reach.
‘Sleep, yes, sleep. To sleep perchance to dream, that’s the worry though, that’s always been the worry…And supposing death is only the prince’s hag-ridden sleep, after all…? Aye, there would be the rub, wouldn’t it? What punishment do they keep in hell for murderers, I wonder? Do you know, Edmund?’
‘You aren’t a murderer,’ said Edmund after a moment. ‘Lucretia von Wolff killed those two men. Afterwards she stabbed herself rather than face the gallows. She was – she was bad. Cruel.’
