‘Filthy swine,’ said Stubb.
‘You take life too seriously,’ his father answered. He lit his cigar and paused to gaze at the coils of blueish smoke drifting lazily from its tip. ‘William, my boy,’ he said finally, ‘love and life both take understanding. I have tried to make you realize this, but still you fail to grasp the concept. Do you see what I am trying to say? When your dear mother was alive…’
‘I’ve had enough,’ cried Stubb and he took a step away.
‘Let me finish,’ his father demanded. He stalled to draw on his unpleasantly large cigar.
How Stubb abhorred his father’s monologues. His younger days were littered with such verbose renditions. He paced away from him across the sun-bathed lawn.
From the patio, he strode into the house via the French windows, through and out of the sitting room, into the lobby then on his way to the hall. A demanding pressure in his skull: he must search out the truth for once and for all.
CHAPTER 6
An Argument
STUBB LEAPT UP the stairs, taking them in twos.
‘Eleanor!’ he bellowed.
From the landing he stormed along the corridor, rattling past the bathroom and servants’ rooms. Dusty and cobwebbed portraits hung on the walls in gilt frames. The pale, washed-out faces of his ancestors loomed large with animated eyes.
He flung open his bedroom door to find an empty bed. Back to the bathroom he went, and peered in. The smell of soap and condensation filtered into the corridor. He glared at the cool and white interior. Striding back across the landing he reached the spiral staircase and hurried to the top as fast as he was able, and stood before the heavy door of the attic. It was slightly ajar; he pushed it open.
A stale smell hung about, the same odour that had lingered for as long as he could remember. The same antique books lined the wall to the right, with the same dust of decades past; the same fireplace which had never tasted coal between the sloped rafters to the left side. The same clumpy workbench; the same rows of presentation cases and drawer chests running the length of the room, the only articles, in the dreary place, which received attention. The same insects, an abundance of entomological possibilities preserved, protected under glass; and Eleanor.
She was there at the casement window, her back to her husband, her palms flat on the windowpanes. By sliding one hand down, she let Stubb see a tiny scarlet balloon hanging in the sky; it would have him believe it still sailed its seas of air, tossed by an ocean of time and was visiting this present future from its passage over the sanatorium two months ago.
In the funereal silence of the attic, Eleanor could be heard to breathe deeply. Stubb’s fraught emotions were caught unprepared: he felt compelled to run over and embrace her, sprinkle her graceful neck with kisses, stroke her hair. Snapshot memories moved dizzily before him – Eleanor laughing with happiness; picking an apple from a tree in Scripping’s field; pretending to sleep, her simple beauty magnified.
Then Eleanor just a hollow effigy, standing in a foul-smelling room crammed with inanimate creatures which seemed to be waiting for a click of a finger, a signal for them to jump, slither and fly from their cases. The place was making Stubb uneasy. He was about to call his wife when, as if by intuition, she turned from the window to face him.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded indignantly.
‘I might ask you the same question,’ Stubb replied.
‘Where did you get a key? This sty is always locked.’ Eleanor threw him a haughty expression and flounced between the rows of cases. She brushed past him but he grabbed the top of her arm and pulled her back. ‘I asked you where.’ He set his mouth firmly and fixed her with a stare. A sparrow that had built its shabby nest in the rafters flew to a hole in the eaves.
‘Let go!’ Eleanor cried out, pretending pain. ‘You may be a king but you’re hurting me.’
Stubb removed neither his grip of her arm nor his gaze. ‘Enough of your nonsense. Tell me.’
Eleanor threw back her untied hair and with her free hand brushed the remainder away from her forehead. ‘You know there’s a key outside the door. Besides, Theodore got me a spare one,’ she admitted.
‘You harpy,’ shouted Stubb and he lightly slapped her face. Eleanor shrieked and clutched her cheek. ‘That creep of a father defiles you, then gives you a key to see his damnation of an insect collection? You expect me to believe that?’
Eleanor had become limp in his grasp and she swayed, sobbing all the while. ‘I’m telling the truth. It … he told me he was trying to make amends; pleaded with me to forgive him. He was desperately sorry, thinking the bathroom empty; if only he could make it up to me, he said. He’s promised to find Alastair.’ Tears ran to her mouth, leaving glistening streaks.
Stubb tightened his hold on her slender arm. ‘Make it up to you,’ he chuckled sarcastically, ‘we know what that means, don’t we? You should know of a few more snippets of information I didn’t tell you about, learnt during the enlightening conversation with the butler.’ Eleanor’s fraught crying was cut in mid-sob. ‘For one, the household staff believe you are playing games with them, talking about a boy who doesn’t exist; and are becoming weary of the way you order them about; and another thing, Pump has been keeping his ears and eyes open. You wouldn’t give that drunken sod the credit, would you? He’s seen my loving wife in my father’s arms.’
‘No, it’s… he is…’
‘He’s seen my darling wife kissing my father and touching his fat, stinking body.’ Stubb realized he was sweating. He wiped the trickles from under his chin.
‘Never!’ Eleanor yelled and she collapsed to her knees as though her bones had dissolved. ‘It’s lies, none of it true. He walked in on me, apologized, transformed into an insect, then the strange watch business; and then walked out again. That’s all, that’s all I remember. Yet you say Pump saw Theodore assault me. How would I not remember such a thing? This is all a really bad episode of the dream. Not like my good dream. This is a different, dreadful story.’ She looked pleadingly up to her husband.
Stubb was in torment. He wanted to believe her; was it too late to patch the rents in the fabric of their marriage that was ripping apart? He tried to lift Eleanor but even her slim form seemed doubled in weight. ‘Explain what happened,’ he demanded then, his thoughts a blare of noise.
‘I’ve told you. How many times do you want to hear?’ Eleanor whimpered. She coughed and gulped, and paused to listen to the oppressive bulk of silence in the attic room. She heard Stubb’s rasping breath, saw purple veins standing high on his forehead, gleaming with sweat.
‘Yesterday, when you were drinking in The Bulldog Fish,’ she began again, throwing an accusing glance before getting to her feet, ‘I decided to bathe. I had finished, about to dress, when Theodore entered. He didn’t knock. Look William, I keep on telling you all this.’
‘Carry on.’
‘He came in and apologized and said he had thought it empty. I said alright, but would he go. He didn’t move. He stood there, you know, looking at me. I was holding the towel to cover myself, before you ask.’ Eleanor swallowed involuntarily. ‘Then he did a strange thing. He held out a pocket watch by its chain.’ Eleanor stood as though transfixed, her eyes filling with more tears, the skin taut on the back of her pale hands held to her breast.
Stubb looked meek and suddenly weary. ‘And then,’ He said, with the words catching in his throat.
‘For Godrey’s sake, do you expect me to make up sordid detail? I can barely remember though I’m certain its thorax made a cracking noise…’ Eleanor’s voice trailed away.
‘Pump was outside in the corridor. Florence was in the house.’
‘Please, I don’t know. I screamed when he first came into the bathroom, I’m certain.’
Realizing he still had a grip of his wife’s chalk-white arm, Stubb released his hold. He wanted to cry out; Pump’s account of the drama slithered into mind and began feeding upon his softened emotions, twisting them onc
e more into the idea that Eleanor was deceiving him: she was the liar.
Some exterior force lifted his hand; it was as though he swam through the air, hover over to the other side of the attic, watch himself slapping her arm, again and again. ‘Seducer; reptile!’ he roared. Eleanor howled like a whipped animal; she wheeled around and out to the coiling stairs.
Stubb’s chin fell to his chest. Wiping his running nose with his cuff, he also made his way to the landing. When in the corridor, he could hear Eleanor weeping incessantly from their bedroom. He stepped down to the hallway. He wanted The Bulldog Fish Tavern; he needed to get drunk.
CHAPTER 7
The Meeting
PONDEROUS WEEKS WITHIN bloated, routine months dragged wearily by. Each day held the common and conventional happenings of the village, save for the birth of Mrs. Codling’s puppies; the feeble Thomas Cratch – sadly losing touch with mind and bodily functions – sent to Smudge Abode for the Elderly; the severe warning to Gerald Glister that should he be seen again anywhere in Muchmarsh wearing his flannelette pyjamas while walking his scruffy mongrel, he would be promptly arrested.
Although the village spent its life comfortably, tenseness and a sense of expectancy hung over the Stubb household like an invisible shroud. Eleanor would wander from room to room as though hopelessly lost in a maze, panic frozen to her face. Wherever possible she avoided Theodore, as did the butler. Florence was bewildered with the change in attitudes of the family; the gardener was unaware of any difference, although he was paid even less attention than the little he had become used to receiving.
The cook noticed: individual eating requirements were beginning to annoy her. ‘They are all sulking like children,’ Mrs. Wickling had said. ‘More than likely it’s over some trifling thing.’
Any of the spare bedrooms were too close to Theodore’s or Eleanor’s rooms and so Stubb’s sleeping companions were trunks and suitcases in the box room. When the household slept, he would creep down in the night to eat like some foraging wild animal wary of sunlight. Having prescribed to the act of ignoring or evading his father and his wife, he found the process became routine. Even the aching within and hurt feelings from rejection (for Theodore and Eleanor were, in turn, ignoring him) had faded.
Half a year is a peculiar period, but only as much as time itself sometimes seems odd. Twenty-six weeks could spin past without much recognition of the fact; it could catch a person by surprise at the rapidity of their life. Or it could dribble away, every minute a snailing, painful existence with an acute awareness of each heartbeat, each tiniest event.
Summer had taken flight only too quickly – it had dragged away its canopy of verdure to leave the ochres, reds and golds of autumn. It was a particularly cold autumn that year and it, in turn, withered and died, leaving the corpse of winter across the land.
When Stubb met his wife in the sitting room by chance, he realized how much he had been missing her; it struck him how slowly the world had been revolving for one hundred and eighty two days. By knowing her daily routines, he had been able to avoid her for weeks at a time. Occasional meetings had been dissolved by a hurried acknowledgement with a restrained nod or a reticent verbal greeting. Situations requiring communication had been dealt with swiftly, resolved with the minimum of contact.
Eleanor had planned to go into Grinding, then decided to go later in the day; Stubb wanted to doze in a chair but had been restless.
His initial reaction upon entering the day room was to leave immediately after seeing Eleanor perched on the edge of the over-ripe settee, her hands cradling her knees. She wore a loose, flowing dress and had plaited her hair, the mahogany tail curling forward over one shoulder.
She looked up without surprise. An emulsion of a cloud, smearing the sun for most of the day, broke its surface briefly. An unusual brightness lit the room as though summer had returned; the crisp snow outside glittered.
Stubb sat and gripped the arm of the chair as if it were his jutting rock in the midst of a torrent. A handful of syllables had been exchanged between them over the months; this miserly situation lived on for a silent minute, each waiting for the other to speak. Eleanor fiddled nervously with silver bracelets about her wrist. Stubb sensed that something was amiss. ‘I can’t stay long,’ he muttered.
Eleanor’s cheeks became flushed; tutting then, she pulled the corners of her mouth up and said, ‘Well, go. I’m sure I haven’t been trying to see you for ten minutes in the last six months. What do I care?’
‘I’m sorry,’ was all William Stubb could say in return. He stood and moved to her side, and held her hands. His own were shaking.
Eleanor dabbed her misted eyes with a square of silk retrieved from her sleeve. ‘I’ve missed you so. I’ve stayed awake some dream nights listening, you walking like a real lost soul. Do we have to carry on this way? I’ve been so lonely.’
‘So have I,’ admitted Stubb. It was then he wanted to smash the carapace he had made over his emotions; lay them bare, expose his true feelings that had been filed away, it seemed, an immeasurable age ago.
‘William, I have something to tell you. It’s desperately important for both of us. If you hate me after, still you must realize it was not my fault.’ She began to sob quietly. ‘Not my fault, you see.’
Stubb’s eyebrows knitted in puzzlement. He spoke hurriedly, the tissue of his calmness tearing. ‘Eleanor, I’ve had these months to think – I see that even after this nightmare, I still love you. I always have. Nothing can be worse than what we’ve been through already; so tell me.’
The grandfather clock in the hall did its best to cover the sounds of the weeping Eleanor but after its quota of four punctilious tones she still wept. ‘I’m impregnated,’ she whispered.
A misinterpretation, a joke, a mistake, anything but truth; Stubb paced back and forth in his new prison, trapped within her words, needing to hold back the walls from groaning closer. Eleanor ran to him and flung her arms about him. She was giddy with the same words as they jangled and rattled in her head, a devilish, echoing merry-go-round.
‘Please love me,’ she whimpered like a child. ‘Our Alastair has returned.’ Stubb pulled her arms away from him gently but firmly and went unsteadily to the door. ‘Where are you going? Don’t go; don’t leave me. If it’s not Alastair – if it’s a rogue insect, coiling inside, using suckers and feelers, I’ll kill it, William, I’ll kill it!’
She reached out for him imploringly but froze when he snapped, ‘Don’t touch me.’
Stubb dragged her last words with him as he trod up to the box room. A manic babble swamped his mind, and above it all, the shrill voice of Eleanor, the same phrase repeated over and over, ‘I’ll kill it, I’ll kill it, I’ll kill it—’
CHAPTER 8
Decision
I’LL KILL HIM, Stubb thought. An obvious solution; and after his father’s death was achieved, all problems would evaporate soon after, he was certain. He was surprised the idea hadn’t struck him sooner.
His usual afternoon nap had been interrupted by this inspiration and had brought him to wakefulness with a jolt.
He rubbed his sticky eyes and although they were open wide, he stared blindly upwards as he lay on the mattress. He must try to think logically, unemotionally. If he were to entertain the concept of murder then he must decide on how the deed was to be accomplished. It would have to be a guaranteed method that was both easily executed and foolproof. Nobody should get even a hint of a scent.
A certain death would be to somehow fill Theodore’s lungs with a noxious gas – rip the oxygen from him and be done with it. Slitting his throat would be a more practical way but certainly a messy business and it would leave too many palpable clues to be found. An arranged accident could be the answer: pushing him through a window, or an unfortunate slip of a handsaw. At that moment, Stubb realized in an instant that thoughts of murder had not been fully absorbed, either consciously or seriously, and the potential of it stung him. Kill his father? How could he ever cons
ider such a savage act? He plumped his pillow, sat up, and after rubbing the top of his balding head as if to impede similar thoughts, leant over to a small cupboard that stood on the floorboards beside him. Yet after pouring ale from a terracotta bottle retrieved from it, the ratchet of his mind clicked on…
The murder would bring his wife and himself closer, as they used to be, he was sure. But what if they were simply to leave, get away from everyone? This ageing possibility was quickly dismissed. They had no resources to start afresh; they would have nowhere else to live. Stubb wanted a house – the house in which he sat; and after all, the property would become his once Theodore was dead. ‘His death,’ Stubb mouthed and the suggestions of murder came to mind again: slitting his throat; gassing him; throwing him out of the window – he knew they all sounded ridiculous.
His relationship with Eleanor still hung on by threads. Some drastic action needed to be instigated, and as soon as possible, to save their marriage from plummeting to its destruction. But was there no alternative to patricide?
The embryo who would become Alastair, curled in Eleanor’s womb, appealed to the depths of his being, pleaded with his instincts, justifying its existence. No matter which man was the sire, it wanted to leave its watery dungeon, feel its heart beating in the outside world.
Whether or not Stubb was the father, the fact remained that Theodore had abused his wife; and the knowledge of that sickened him. If Stubb was honest with himself, he knew his own disturbed mind needed purging, Eleanor had to be avenged, and told the answer to their problems – his father must die.
His wife was not due back into the house until early evening. Stubb had no alternative but to wait.
He was fretful and restless: he got up and, to pass some of the time, opened one of the chests stored in the box room to inspect its contents. As he pulled up the lid, an odour of mothballs and dampness rose from the clothes and objects stored inside. Sequined pantaloons, a toreador’s jerkin and white pigskin gloves; a waist sash, burgundy capes and a judge’s wig; a revolving cartridge pistol in its brown leather holster; a stringless violin accompanied by a block of resin; a papier mâché mask and other strange theatrical creations. After inspecting some of the items more closely, he tired of the diversion and so closed the lid of the chest and lay on the mattress again.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 4
