House of Bells

by Chaz Brenchley

  Frank was looking at her now with something more than speculation in his eyes. Something knowing. He might not remember his own past, but he might remember hers. Her face, her real name. A Fleet Street journalist, working for a red top – for Tony’s red top, above all: what could be more likely? A rational man might tell himself that he was wrong, that there was no possibility of Grace Harley being here, but this man wasn’t rational. There was nothing to stop him leaping to insane conclusions that did just happen to be true.

  Hastily, she said, ‘What’s that you were saying about the old chapel here burning down? And the bell in the lake?’ It was the last story she wanted to hear, but the first thing she thought of, sitting high in her memory, right there, just as she sat here on the chapel’s old stones right in the shadow of its tower, under the mouth of its dreadful bell.

  He said, ‘Back in the day, in the seventeenth century, the master of the house had his private chapel out here, with a priest’s house by. Why he didn’t want him in D’Espérance itself – or why the man wouldn’t go, more likely – I’m not clear. There is no record, though I do have my suspicions. I think he was a wise man, though he did a foolish thing. Anyway, here he was, in place and in authority; and the master of the house was murdered. By his wife, it may have been, or by his housekeeper; there are different tales told. By a woman, though. And that was petty treason either way, the murder of her lawful master by a subordinate, wife or servant as she was. A man would have been drawn and hanged; for a woman, she must be burned at the stake. And so she was, at the priest’s order and at the hands of the house servants, by the waterside here, and her remains flung into the lake. There was no due process, no trial. The local Justice of the Peace was outraged. He sent his constables to arrest the priest, but the man was tipped off; he was long gone before they came for him. His house and the chapel burned that night, though it’s not known who set the fire. As I said, the story has it that the chapel bell went into the water in chase of its mistress, and no priest has served here since.’

  Her head was full of pictures, then and now: fire here, fire by the lakeside. A woman in the flames. A woman in flames. A hand reaching out of flame, to set another girl alight . . .

  A bell in the water, endlessly tolling a death that had not quite happened yet. Endlessly sounding a warning, perhaps, like church bells in the war: beware, beware! Fear! Fire! Foes! Trying to tell a world that would not listen how she was not dead yet, how her spirit still lingered somewhere between the fire and the water, how she could still snatch out at the heedless.

  Doing that good work, a word to the wise, to any who could hear – and still finding time to punish Grace, that relentless bell, to slash her stitches and cut her wrist to the bone. It should warn the world, maybe. Have her burned too. She didn’t quite know what petty treason was, but killing your own baby had to count, surely? And dying in a fire, horrible, maybe that would finally be punishment enough.

  Maybe she should have thrown herself into the flames last night, instead of the water. Tried to find the lady. If she’d known she was in a three-card monte – the woman in the flames, the bell beneath the water, her baby dead and everywhere and coming – she might have done just that. She knew she couldn’t win.

  Here came an interruption: a boy in corduroy, jacket and jeans, running easily up the path. She shouldn’t call him a boy, perhaps, he was maybe her own age, but oh, he looked so young in his tangled hair and his tangled innocence. He nodded to her dispassionately, said something to Tom that she couldn’t understand, couldn’t even disentangle the complex sounds of it enough to write them out in her head; when he said the same thing to Frank, he won himself no more than a scowl and a curse.

  ‘Speak English, damn you, if you don’t have the Gaelic! I’ve none of your heathen tongue and do not want it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Frank. You’ve learned that much. The captain says it’s time for lunch.’ And he repeated the phrase, slowly and clearly, still unintelligibly.

  Frank snorted and turned towards the bell tower, towards the bell rope, towards the bell: and then remembered, and glanced at her, and snorted, and ducked back inside his subterranean home.

  And came out with a long straight coach-horn, set it to his lips and blew a blast – to the north, she thought – and then another to each of the other points of the compass.

  Tom looked smug as echoes rang back down the valley. His idea, to save her the cutting bell – or at least to save her imagining, as he thought, that the bell was cutting at her.

  She could be grateful, even if he thought it was all her imagination. The horn couldn’t scratch her. All it did was make her feel hungry, thinking about last night’s stew and the long night since, all that had happened, the shock and horror of it and the skipped suggestion of breakfast.

  They made a little party, then, leaving Frank and going back down to the house: she and Tom and this new boy – Leaf, he called himself – and he only wanted to talk to Tom and only in that language, which left her feeling deliberately cut out of the conversation. That was nothing new. Half the men she’d known for half her life had done that as a matter of course, treating her as furniture or wallpaper or pudding. It was more or less what she expected, but not here. Oddly, here it made her furious.

  As they bypassed the walled garden and came back through the stable yard, she let the two young men drift ahead of her: a step or two, and then a yard or two, then further. Heads down, intent on what they were doing – walking, yes, and talking too, and in their private code which needed concentration and paid it back with delight: how clever we are, and how different! – neither one of them noticed they were leaving her behind. They walked out under the shadow of the archway into the further sunlight of the courtyard, and neither one of them noticed that she wasn’t even following them any longer.

  She stood still and watched them go, just in case; then she turned and walked quickly out of sight. Sooner or later, one of them was going to notice she was gone. Tom, she thought, she hoped. He’d come back to look for her. She thought, she hoped. But she wanted him to find her doing something, something else, not waiting for him to remember her.

  She was being adolescent, she knew – it was the kind of behaviour that got her into trouble at school, often and often, we don’t like attention-seeking here, missy – but even so. She did it anyway. Being honest with herself – Grace, perhaps, being honest with Georgie, because why not? – she did absolutely want Tom’s attention. And expected it, had come to expect it, because he’d given her so much of it already. And would probably have expected it in any case, because he was a young man and that was what they did, they paid attention to her. Because she was a woman, or because she was Grace Harley, or because she was available or famous or any reason else. There always was a reason.

  In the meantime, though, she did also want to make Tony happy. That was what she did, because she was Grace Harley, because he was Tony. It was very simple, really.

  She thought she had found his missing journo, and that was good. She thought Frank was at least halfway mad, and something in this house had made him that way. That was not so good, at least for Frank. For Tony, it might make a story; that was good. If she could find it. Journo Goes Mad was not a story. Commune Drives our Undercover Reporter Crazy might be, but she’d need more than that. She’d need to find out why and how.

  And not be driven crazy herself in the meantime. And not just bleed and bleed and be a stranger.

  She didn’t want to walk into the house right behind the boys, because Tom might or might not remember about the bell waiting just inside the door there, he might or might not think about her, but Leaf knew nothing. He’d reach out and strike it, twice and twice; and every stroke would cut her, and she’d bleed and bleed.

  Instead she cut herself away like this, and Tom would come to find her. By himself. They’d be alone again, because everybody at work in the yard here had gone to lunch; and she’d snare him in the shadows, half tremulous Georgie and ha
lf impetuous Grace. Nothing reckless, nothing to scare him away: just her arms around his neck and a nervous kiss like a nice girl, her not-very-girlish body warm and suggestive against his, cooperative under his hands if he dared to reach to touch. Whatever more came later, that would be fine. Right now she wanted him wanting her, thinking about her, not focused on his precious language. Not at all. If she was a spy, he was her double agent, and she wanted to turn him. Here and now.

  Actually, she thought he was half turned already, only he hadn’t realized it yet. She just needed to make things clear.

  Boys could be very dim. Give her a man, every time – except this time. She wouldn’t try to turn Webb. She might let him seduce her while Kathie lay adrift, but that would be a different thing, another kind of spying.

  Another world, and at least his pillow talk wouldn’t be in his secret language.

  Where to let Tom find her, now? There was the cider press, but that was a failure. The same for the woodturning workshop. Those were all the wrong associations.

  The Museum of Failed Endeavour, did Webb call this place? Well, she wasn’t going to fail in her endeavours. Not this time. Tony love, I’ve got your story for you. And, look, it’s not about me this time, except in a good way . . .

  There was the bread oven, a cube of brick with a heap of wood beside – but she’d been rude about the bread and hadn’t eaten it. Again, the wrong story.

  The candle-making workshop, though: candles were good. Useful to the house, and profitable too. I wanted to help, Tom, so I came in here to volunteer: only there’s no one around. I’ll come back another time. After lunch. Only – well, I don’t want to go into lunch with everyone else, they’ll all be ringing that damn bell as they come, so I thought I’d hang back. Thanks for coming to find me. You’re really sweet, you know that . . .? Oh, come here.

  That would do it. She supposed there must be boys who could resist her, but Tom wouldn’t prove to be the first of them. Let her once get her fingers in his hair, he’d be hers for the taking. Any way she wanted.

  Her wish, his command. Help me understand this place, Tom love. Tell me everything. He’d do that, and more. All unwitting, he’d spy for her, be her decoy and her translator, her bodyguard at need. And a friend in need, that too. A friendly body in her bed, a guard against the horrors of the night. There’d be no more running off and leaving her, she’d see to that. It wouldn’t be hard.

  She stepped inside the workshop, leaving both halves of the stable door wide so that he could find her easily when he came looking, but in the unlit gloom where he wouldn’t be so shy, in privacy so he wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder to see who else was looking.

  She could be smart sometimes, in some things. Sly, some people called it. Her.

  Gloomy it was in there, but enough light spilled in at her back. Enough to give her a shadow, even, throwing it across the tin bath elevated on its bed of bricks. No fire beneath that now, though the whole space still reeked of paraffin. The bath was about half full of molten wax; on a rack above it, a hundred wicks hung warmly dripping. The candle-makers must only just have left, at the summons of the horn. It was odd to think of the whole house, the whole wide estate this way: people trooping through places just abandoned by other people just ahead. Mark my footsteps, good my page. Ghosts and followers – only, she was unsure slightly who the ghosts were. Those who went before, or those who came after?

  Or those who never came at all. It wasn’t fair, suddenly to find herself thinking of her baby again: but that was life, unfair all down the line. You can never be punished enough.

  Not even when still wax stirs all by itself, when ripples run of their own accord.

  When flame erupts beneath, from a pool of paraffin that had been out and dead.

  When shapes form in that shifting wax, hands that shape themselves and rise and reach for you with long deadly fingers.

  When you don’t, can’t make the effort to pull away out of their reach. When it isn’t worth the trouble.

  When you almost bend forward, indeed, to make it easy for them to close their hot soft lethal grip around your throat, as you’re still thinking oh, my baby . . .

  EIGHT

  Not her baby, though.

  These hands were full-sized, mature. Adult.

  Even if he was growing, her baby-ghost, he was doing it in true time, being true. Barely a boy yet. Not like this.

  These were the hands that had reached from the fire for Kathie. Not her baby; not her ghost.

  She didn’t have to submit to this.

  But there was still nothing in her head, no resistance, only that yearning grief for what she had done, her dead baby. She had no fight in her. She felt those deadly fingers melting into each other, drawing yet more tightly about her neck, dragging her down towards the seething mass of molten wax they rose from; and still she lacked any hint of struggle. Grace would have kicked and screamed against anything but this, which might finally be punishment enough. Georgie would never kick or scream at all; she was too submissive.

  It wasn’t fair, to drag poor Georgie down, but that was life.

  Only, Grace was still thinking about her baby, wanting to make amends; and she might almost be glad to go down into the dark, but it ought to be her own ghost that took her there.

  In her head she heard that tolling bell, setting a rhythm that she thought she ought to march to, slow and sombre. These hands were in too much hurry.

  She still wasn’t fighting, exactly – but her hands had clenched on the edge of the bath, and the heat of it helped her focus. It was almost hot enough to burn; she supposed it would burn if she only held on long enough. If she didn’t die of strangulation first as the warm waxy grip tightened and tightened on her throat; if she didn’t black out and slump head first into the bath and drown there. If you could drown in wax. If it could get as far as your lungs before it filled your throat like a plug. Drown or choke or strangle, she’d be dead whichever way it went.

  She’d almost wanted that, for so long now. Had thought she did want it, enough to cut her wrist that one time, twice; knew that she deserved it, but – no, not like this. Not for this, for someone else’s reasons. When she did go, it should be her baby who fetched her. He was all around this place, everywhere she turned, every time she heard a bell ring; she’d wait for him. A little longer here; she could stand that. She couldn’t stand this; it felt like cheating. Like cutting her wrist again, trying to dodge what was due.

  She still didn’t fight against the ruthless grip on her throat, no.

  She set her feet, set her stubborn shoulders. Set her hands and heaved.

  One monstrous effort, and she tipped that whole tin bath over.

  Tipped it off its firebed of bricks, away from her, so that all the molten wax flooded out across the cool stone floor before the inverted bath landed with a sonorous clang that sounded almost like a bell, that made her almost look around for her baby after all.

  Just for a moment, the hands seemed still to cling to her neck. Then there was a wrenching tug and that grip was gone. She looked down dizzily, and there was nothing: no disembodied hands of wax lying revealed on the floor, only a spreading liquid pool.

  She stood there foolishly, wheezing, gasping, her own hands lightly at her throat now, touching smooth sore skin while spilled wax lapped around her sandals.

  When it was over, it felt suddenly as though everything was over. As though she had no strength to move now, and no reason. She might just stand there until Tom came at last to find her, or the candle-makers all came back from lunch, or came back tomorrow, or . . .

  She might, she thought – except that a voice spoke suddenly behind her, to say that someone at least had come already.

  ‘Well done.’

  Soft, well spoken, male – but not Tom.

  She was far, far beyond being startled now. Curiosity turned her head, slowly, cautious only for her sore neck. At first all she could see was a shadow in the doorway, outlined by light. W
hen he stepped inside, she made him out as much by dress and movement as by his face.

  ‘Cookie.’ It was what everybody here called him, so a plague on Mr Cook. ‘Was that you?’

  He was applauding, or at least approving – but that could be the manners of a well-bred enemy, obliged to praise an effective counterstroke. His might have been the hands reaching to choke her, though she couldn’t imagine why. Or how. She didn’t want to try. She only wanted truth, not understanding.

  ‘No, not me. Nothing of mine. You face your own demons, in D’Espérance.’

  She knew that, she’d worked that out already; but she shook her head determinedly. ‘That . . . was nothing to do with me. That was Kathie’s ghost, not mine.’ It was insane, this whole conversation – but she’d had two waxen hands around her throat, and he had seen it. Madness had nowhere to go, in such a world.

  He was quiet for a moment, mulling things over. Then he reached out a hand, oddly courtly, like a man helping a woman step across a puddle: ‘Come out of that, here, before it sets.’

  Her turn to stand on the threshold, then, with the sun on her back, watching as he took his turn in the wax. His workmen’s boots were less troubled than her sandals, but she still wasn’t sure why he was wading into the stuff, until she saw him kick over the piles of bricks that had held the bath above the flame and stamp one or two of the fallen bricks into shards and dust. After that she was utterly bewildered, until he said, ‘I’ve been telling them for months now that this was unstable. The fire degrades the brick; it was bound to fail. No one’s going to think it was overturned deliberately – only that they were lucky this happened when the stable was empty. Now come with me –’ stepping out of the wax, stepping over to her, taking her hand in the most sexless way imaginable – ‘let’s get you cleaned up and sorted out.’

  He led her like a child, and she went with him like a child: trusting, bewildered, hurting and hopeful.