House of Bells

by Chaz Brenchley

  It was almost dark enough to be true, under the shadow of the trees. But the trees had to end at last; not even the deepest forest goes on for ever. They stepped out into light again, and here was a dark stretch of water contained between straight lines and stony banks. Beyond that rose a wild tangled garden; above that, the house.

  She had seen houses, grand houses, many of them. Seen them, been through their doors and welcomed, slept in four-poster beds as though she belonged there. Played with their luxuries like a little girl dressed up and playing princess.

  Learned the truth of them – or no, she had always known the truth of them, had been a part of it herself; only that she had seen it ruthlessly exposed, their truth and her own – and did not ever expect to be invited back.

  This wasn’t the same, but even so. There was always this moment, where she stood in the shadow and knew that she didn’t belong. She used to brazen it by, because that was what a princess would do; now she was daunted, because of course Georgie would be.

  Of course she showed it. That was what Georgie would do. She stood here by the lapping water’s margin – Tom wanted to walk on the grass now that he’d slipped his sandals off, so she’d gone with him, a few steps to the side of the stony roadway, that much closer to the lake – and stared up at the house where it loured against the darkening sky, and could apparently not move at all.

  As soon as he’d caught on, Tom stepped back to stand beside her, with her. Not waiting for her, in any sense she knew – not impatient, not visibly or determinedly or effortfully patient, not mocking, not any kind of manly – but simply there. Keeping her company, until she was ready for the next step and the next and the one after that.

  Nice boy. She could draw comfort from that, perhaps, a little. And mock herself, perhaps, a little; be impatient on her own account, with her own anxiety.

  Draw a nervous little breath and say, ‘I hadn’t . . . I hadn’t expected it to be quite so big.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No one does. And it always is that big. You don’t get used to it, I mean. Familiarity doesn’t shrink it down to any contemptible size. Just as well, really. I mean, you wouldn’t want it to, would you? Who’d want to get used to that?’

  Tony would. The thought was immediate, unbidden. It was the scale that he thought in, the sort of house that came naturally to him.

  She needed not to be thinking about Tony.

  She said, ‘I don’t get it. What’s it for?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at the moment, it’s for us. What comes next, what we build here, what we make of it – that’s for the future to show. For us to decide. For you, maybe, if you stay.’

  ‘I don’t belong in a place like this.’ That was more than honest, it was absolute. Said in two voices, to contain everything that she was or could be.

  ‘No one does,’ he said again. ‘How could you? But here we are, and I think the house is getting used to us.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’ She wasn’t sure if she wanted the house to be full or empty. Two dozen souls, or two hundred. Lose herself in a crowd, or make herself known to a handful.

  ‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Yet. One more now.’

  ‘If I stay.’

  ‘Of course. That’s up to you; don’t let me bully you into it,’ he said with a smile and that little trill on his flute that apparently meant her. Meant Georgie. Meant who she was meant to be.

  Meant a lie, then, but she didn’t want to think about that either.

  ‘Is it? Up to me, I mean?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Isn’t there a – I don’t know, a test? Probation, something? Don’t you get to watch me for a while, see if I fit in?’

  ‘What, you think we should take you on approval, like a stamp?’ He wasn’t faking it, that baffled amusement, scratching at his head with the end of his flute.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not faking it either. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Well. Not really how it works here. I mean, if you don’t fit in, you’re the one who’ll know it first, aren’t you? You’ll feel it. And then I suppose you’ll just go. I don’t think anyone has, yet. Just gone, I mean, and not come back. Of course, you could, if this didn’t feel right to you. But then, if it didn’t feel right to you, you wouldn’t have come, would you?’

  I was desperate – which was true and not-true, and she didn’t need to say it either way, truly or otherwise. She let it lie between them, unspoken, and said instead, ‘I didn’t know what I was coming to. Still don’t, come to that. Who are you, what are you, why are you here?’

  ‘I’m Tom,’ he said. ‘I grow vegetables and play the flute, and I’m here because I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘No, I know – but it’s what I meant. What I mean. I can’t speak for anyone else. I won’t. If you come on up to the house –’ when you’re ready, his body said in its stillness: no gestures, no urgency, no pressure – ‘I’ll take you to Leonard. Then you’ll see.’

  ‘Leonard?’

  A smile, a nod. Unforthcoming.

  ‘Will he tell me what this place is all about?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said again; and then: ‘He’ll probably want to talk about you.’ Tell you what you’re all about, she heard, unless it was wait for you to tell him.

  She couldn’t lose her nerve, even now. Grace had no nerves to lose, and Georgie had lost hers long ago and was here anyway, because a girl had to be somewhere, after all.

  She said, ‘Come on, then,’ and took that step, one step forward through the tangled grass; and as she started, so she heard that bell again, rolling down the terraces and over the water, slamming into her, slow and sonorous and cruel beyond measure.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Apparently, she’d gasped aloud. It had to be that. She wasn’t crying, and she was still walking, somehow. And the right way, too: along the verge, towards the house. Not into the lake, not back to the woods.

  Something was stirring in the lake, she thought: some little hint of whirlpool, bubbles of mud.

  Apparently, she could still talk as well as walk, even against the cold dull heavy beat of it. She said, ‘What does it mean, that? That bell?’

  He smiled. ‘That means it’s dinner time. Good time to turn up, actually. You get a chance to look us over, all together.’

  You get a chance to look at me, you mean. All of you, together.

  But she was still walking. And not in time with the bell, stubbornly out of step. That felt like a refusal; that was good enough. For now, for her. For here.

  Stubbornly taking the lead, that too, positively marching up the road now. Properly on the road now, none of that kicking through the verge like a reluctant child. Let Tom hug the hedge if he wanted to, if the broken stone and gravel was too hard underfoot.

  But the hedge was high and wild, throwing out bramble-runners to trip him by the ankle, and more to threaten his Lincoln green, his eyesight and his hair. Soon enough he was pulling his sandals out of his belt, slipping them on again, taking his place beside her on the road.

  ‘I ought to have soles like leather by now,’ he said ruefully, ‘but they keep making me wear shoes and go to town. By the time my feet toughen up, it’ll be all mud and frost out here and I’ll want boots anyway.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘Well,’ he allowed, ‘not want, no. But I’ll wear them. Anyone would.’

  Inevitably, they were both looking at her own feet now, at the way she was struggling in court shoes that were entirely practical in London, on London streets, but the next worst thing to hopeless here. The roadway sloped steeply and was smooth nowhere: pitted and rutted, surfaced alternately with rough stone and gravel where it was surfaced at all, where it wasn’t dried cracked mud with dark puddles lurking in the deepest ruts.

  ‘You’ll want to change those,’ he said, brightly helpful.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she replied, immedia
te. This at least she could do, she was trained for it, bantering with bright boys.

  ‘Well,’ he allowed, ‘not want, no. But you’ll change them anyway.’

  And then he smiled, pleased with himself, pleased with her for playing along. In honesty, she was pleased with herself too.

  She said, ‘They’re my best shoes, these,’ meaning my most comfortable, telling nothing but the truth.

  He shrugged. ‘Not to worry. We’ll find you something better. Or make them. Or teach you how to make them, that’d be best.’

  ‘Or you could mend the road,’ she said, perhaps a little waspish as her ankle turned on a loose stone and her foot plunged into a hole and she almost lost that shoe in the mud at the bottom.

  ‘Or that,’ he agreed, ‘but I don’t think it’s a priority. Hardly anyone drives this way, and we’re fine on foot. Well, you will be, once you’re used to it. Look, would you like me to take your case?’

  Yes, of course I would, you oaf, I’d have liked that half a mile ago – but they were at the top of the slope now, right in the shadow of the house, and she was abruptly daunted again. Wanting something to hold on to.

  She shook her head, and turned to walk along the paved terrace to the portico and the high door; and was stopped by his soft laugh, his unexpected hand on her arm.

  ‘We don’t use the front,’ he said. ‘We’re in the country here. The front door is for strangers and funerals. Family all comes around the back.’

  She wasn’t family, not yet. Not ever, Grace’s voice in her head said as a reminder: she was undercover here, working, not joining in. Not signing up. So why did she get a warm feeling just from the way he said it, never mind the way he glanced at her sideways, conspiratorial?

  It wasn’t as if family had ever meant anything good to her. She and her parents weren’t talking any more, and her son—

  Well. If she talked to her son, he wasn’t talking back.

  She remembered an absence in the woods, coming at her. And might have faltered then, might have let the next heavy stroke of the bell stop her dead: only that it didn’t come, and she sort of toppled forward into the silence of it and – well, just carried on.

  Down the side of the house, then, and around the back: into a broad courtyard made by two long wings and a stable block. The arch through to the stables had a clock tower above; she glanced at the clock with a jaundiced eye but that was stopped at ten to three and surely couldn’t have been striking. She couldn’t see any other bell tower, any likely place for the kind of bell she’d been hearing.

  Something to be grateful for, perhaps. Small mercies, and short-lived for sure. She’d hear it again tomorrow.

  If she was still here tomorrow. If she didn’t cut her losses and run. She might do that, she was tempted already – except that she had nothing to run to, nothing to go back for. Tony would despise her if she pulled out now, one night in. And she’d stuck worse than this, hadn’t she? She’d stuck prison, and the trial. And all the press, before and after. And the funeral, her baby’s funeral, she’d stuck that. And every day since, and . . .

  And really this was nothing, walking over smooth cobbles to a back door that stood open, wide and welcoming. Parked there beside it was the car she’d seen in town, the Morris Traveller, confirming her suspicions. It still had the ladders lying slant across the roof rack. She wasn’t going to ask; she didn’t need to.

  Tom said, ‘Charlie and Fish. That’s their car. We don’t have one, else; we don’t really have one at all. They come and go. But when they’re here, they like to be useful round about. Helping out the neighbours. And we’ve got these long ladders, and of course nobody in town has any to compare, nobody with sensible houses; so they clean out people’s gutters for them, and rescue cats from trees, and stuff like that.’

  ‘And take people’s heads off, near enough, the way they drive that thing,’ she said.

  ‘There is that. They’re not very good with knots.’ He tugged at the slack of a rope, and tutted, and did nothing to fix it more tightly or to pull the ladders straight. ‘But it saves little old ladies having to call out the roofer or the fire brigade. It’s good to have a few voices on our side, to set against the gruff old colonels who all think we should be called up or given six of the best. Or both.’

  She had some experience of gruff old colonels, and some sympathy with them, if only because a few had shown her a little disinterested kindness. She thought it might be better if they could walk the streets of their own town without being yelled out of the way by speeding hippies. But this was probably not the time to say so.

  There was nobody about in the courtyard, presumably because they had all been called to dinner. Where Tom was now taking her. This would be her last minute alone with him, then: she really ought to be using it to learn more about this place, or Leonard, who was apparently leader here, or—

  He must be hungry, or in a hurry to find his friends, or else in a hurry to hand her over to someone else. Down below, he had given her all the time she needed; up here, he gave her no time at all. Across the courtyard and in at the door, no time to linger and ask questions now, and that was suddenly almost a relief. Even though it meant, it must mean, that the next thing would be a roomful of strangers.

  In at the door, then, and through a cloakroom, a chaotic jumble of discarded shoes and boots and coats and jackets and, yes, at least one actual cloak on a hook there; and into a corridor beyond, long bare boards underfoot and doors leading off on either side. Really, it was all very normal for a country house and not at all hippyish, except that there was a little table just at the side there as they came through, hung with a bright cotton tasselled cloth embroidered with tiny mirrors. It shrieked India at her, the hippy trail, girls come back with long loose hair and swinging skirts and cheesecloth shirts and gurus. Gurus above all, preaching meditation and peace and rebirth, ancient foreign wisdoms that sat impossibly awkward in an English landscape, as their clothes really didn’t suit the weather.

  Was that what she’d come to: a transplanted ashram, a little man with a vast beard teaching scriptures in an alien chant?

  But on the table, on the cloth stood something else. No bizarre idol with too many limbs, no smoking incense, no sanctity. Just a polished wooden stand, a high frame with a bell hanging from it. Too big for a hall decoration, practical bronze: it was as out of place as the cloth it stood on, jarring both with that and the house around. Her mind labelled it a ship’s bell straight off. She ought not to know that, unless she’d picked it up from those black-and-white war films her father used to take her to. She was still certain, though. Of course, it was possible to be certain and still wrong – oh, she knew: who better? – but she really didn’t think so this time. If she looked more closely, that engraving around the bell’s shoulder would no doubt tell her which ship it had come from.

  But it was a bell, and she wasn’t going anywhere near it.

  But Tom was reaching out casually, unthinkingly, meaninglessly; gripping the white rope that hung below the mouth of the bell; swinging it once, twice and again.

  Striking the unseen clapper against the inside rim: once, twice and again.

  Making it sound, high and stern and penetrating.

  Once, twice and again.

  Only perhaps realizing that he’d done it after the thing was done, it was so unthinking an action. Turning then to her with a wry smile and a shrug, saying, ‘We always do that to announce our arrival in the house. Leonard likes it. Once for each of us, twice for a visitor. First time, you count as a visitor, so— Hey. Are you all right?’

  No. No, she really was not all right. She had dropped her case, just there by her foot, where she stood shaking.

  Her wrist throbbed, in time with the hurried beating of her heart. It didn’t seem enough to explain why she’d let go so suddenly, but that hand just felt too heavy and too remote; it couldn’t hold on any longer.

  Perhaps it was her who couldn’t hold on, against the relentless resonance
of the bell as it sounded through her skull like a knife; but really she thought it was her hand, all independent of her will.

  She still hadn’t taken her gloves off. They were fawn in colour, nylon, and she could see that one – the left, it was – darkening as she stood there, as it hung slack at her side.

  Darkening all the way down, in a line from the invisible wrist towards the fingers’ ends.

  Darkening, filling.

  Starting to drip.

  She watched that first drip fall, straight down on to the clasp of her suitcase, where it lay splattered across the brass: not that dark after all, brightly red.

  And another.

  Once, twice and again.

  ‘Here, let me see . . .’

  Apparently, she was going to do nothing but stand there and watch it happen.

  She needed Tom to take charge, as he did: gripping her arm and lifting it, tugging back the sleeve of her coat. Her dress beneath was sleeveless. There was just the glove, with that dark stain showing from the wrist down to the fingers.

  Starting to spread the other way now, as he raised her hand. Little dribbles, rivulets of blood running down towards her elbow, tickling.

  At least blood didn’t make her faint. Not the sight of it, at least. If she felt abruptly giddy and sick, it wasn’t girlish idiocy. Though she would quite like to sit down now, as that throbbing sharpened to quite a fierce ache as Tom struggled to peel the glove away from her forearm, trying to roll it back on itself like a stocking, not getting very far, so that in the end she did have to help him after all, showing him how to tug the fingers loose one by one.

  They were quite wet now, the fingers. She watched them stain the fingertips of the other glove as she tugged, and made a little exasperated noise and wanted to tug that one off too, only she couldn’t because Tom still had hold of that arm – and actually it was hurting quite a bit now, and she really did want to sit down even before he finally worked the glove away and there was her hand exposed, with its two cuts almost parallel across the inside of the wrist.