by Syd Moore
My stomach growled, audibly punctuating his sentence. How embarrassing. I dashed inside, fixed a plate of olives and grabbed a large bag of tortilla chips. I scooped a handful out for Alfie, with a dab of hummus, and added some chopped carrots on the side. Alfie yelped with glee when he saw the crisps and ignored the carrots. I asked him if he would like a juice or if he wanted to come outside and talk with the grown-ups. He pulled one of his ‘you’ve-gotta-be-joking’ faces and went back to the TV.
Andrew was delighted by the spread, which I laid across the table. We nibbled at it for a while before I picked up the conversation where we had left off. ‘So do you like it down here?’
He propped himself up in his chair, back in command of the situation, formal almost. I wondered if he was regretting telling me his story.
‘It’s charming. Very pretty. Good community spirit. The kids are all right. There are some parochial attitudes amongst the staff that need challenging but generally I can’t complain.’
I remarked that I was surprised that, given his previous vocation, he had chosen a private school.
‘The money was good. You?’ He popped an olive in his mouth and tossed his head back. Although I still didn’t know him well, I saw instantly that it was an act of defiance. Beyond the glassy coat of his eyes there burnt a great rage against a God who had deserted him. This cocky materialism was just one aspect to the rebellion.
I pulled my gaze from his. I knew that type of anger too, and if the conditions were right it could re-ignite from nothing, like a forest fire, spreading destruction. ‘It was the first job I got after I moved here,’ I told him.
He nodded but didn’t look at me. He was staring down the garden, at the rose bushes near the hammock. A small tortoiseshell butterfly sunned its wings on one of the tall pink blooms.
‘So how much do you know about your namesake?’ he said slowly, eyes still on the bush.
An image of Sarah flashed into my mind. She stood on the sand near Bell Wharf, hair fluttering in the breeze.
He came back.
I frowned and pushed the image away. Then I told him what I had learnt from the books, from the fiche and from the library, omitting the small matter of why I had started my investigations.
He was attentive, and listened with interest. Occasionally he commented on my findings, at other points he raised his eyebrows to signify that some of what I had to tell was news to him. He sighed when I told him the story of the child who had burnt and shook his head. ‘Life is tragic and cruel. The loss of a child …’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
I told him about the cholera epidemics and Sarah’s own bereavements and finally wound up with the legend of her death, first relaying the axe-wound climax, then outlining the myth (if myth it was) of her headless body afloat in Doom Pond.
‘You need to read the journals,’ he said, when I’d done. ‘There’s a lot of information in them that you should know.’
‘I’d love to,’ I answered quickly.
‘Then we can share theories,’ he said with a smile.
‘Of course,’ I added. The man was proving a very useful ally.
If you can trust him.
The words popped into my head out of nowhere.
I looked about. We were alone in the garden. There was no one else there. I craned my ear: there was a faint growl of a car engine powering down the street, the soft whistle of a swift, a small child exclaiming in a nearby garden. But the voice had been as clear as if someone had been behind me, whispering in my ear.
Andrew searched my face. ‘What’s that? A wasp? So who is she?’
For a second I was unsure if he hadn’t heard the voice too.
‘Wh … who?’
He sat back and studied my face. ‘Sarah Grey. I mean – who is she in relation to you? Who did you think I meant?’
I was stammering. ‘I’m not sure.’
He frowned. ‘You OK?’
Sweat was pouring down my body and between my legs. I shifted with discomfort. ‘Yes. She’s a relation.’
‘I got that. Which one? Great, great, great grandmother?’
‘Well, kind of. Add a couple of “greats” here or there.’
Andrew cocked his head to one side. ‘How can you not know exactly? Surely you’ve traced the lineage?’
It seemed to me at that moment that there was a threat in his words, and for a second I felt his eyes fix on my face. I put a hand up to cover the prickling flesh of my cheeks.
It must have been a peculiar movement for he leant in. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? Is it the heat?’
There was a screech inside the house and Alfie tottered out complaining loudly that the TV had finished. I scooped him up in my arms and held him tight. Much to his dismay I kissed him.
Andrew took it as a cue to leave. ‘Thanks. It’s getting late I realize. Time for the little man to go to bed.’
The look of horror on my son’s face made him laugh. He leant over and ruffled his hair. Unusually Alfie let him.
‘I’ll get that journal to you,’ he said to me.
Despite my discomfort I didn’t want to see him go. He collected his car keys from the table.
I stood and saw him into the kitchen. ‘It sounds interesting. Any chance you could pop it by tomorrow?’
He turned with an amused expression on his lips. ‘I’m afraid not. It’s at home. Well, my parents’ house in Glasgow. I’m going up there on Saturday for a week to see the folks. I’ll have a good look for it.’
‘Oh.’ I was doubly disappointed.
Alfie stuck his hand out and caught the sleeve of Andrew’s t-shirt. ‘But Mummy wants you to come back soon.’
‘Alfie, leave Andrew alone.’ I counted to ten, trying not to blush for the umpteenth time.
‘But you dooooo.’ He squirmed in my arms: I squirmed internally.
I returned him to the floor and told him to go and find a biscuit, then I quickly led Andrew through the hall.
Just before he left he asked me what plans I had for the summer. I told him, truthfully, not much. He didn’t follow it up but asked if I’d come across the name Tobias Fitch.
I ran it through my brain. ‘Nope. Not heard of him. Who is he? A student?’
He smiled thoughtfully. ‘I’ll pop round once I’m back.’
That would be nice, I told him, and leant in to give him a kiss on the cheek but he had already started down the garden path.
I closed the door after him and leant against it.
My heart didn’t stop hammering until I heard his car exit my road.
Chapter Fourteen
The other day I found the book I had been reading at that time. In the margin of one page there is a crude likeness of Andrew. I had spent time wrapping the tiny curls of his hair about his face but had concentrated mostly on the deep russet pools of his eyes. Even now they startle me as they peer up from the page, vivid and alive but not as astonishing as the real thing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s clear to me as I flick through the doodles on the pages of the paperback, that I was rather taken with Mr McWhittard.
This was problematic on a couple of levels, not least because he was my boss. Nor did I want to get involved with another mess. That is, I didn’t want another relationship. They were ridiculously untidy. And difficult and dangerous. People you love do things you can’t control and make you feel awful even if they love you.
Especially if they love you.
Of course I yearned for certain aspects of the mess, but I was afraid too. Whether you liked to admit it or not, sex made you feel stuff. Not just physical pleasure. The hormones it whips up play havoc with the delicate chemical balance that constitutes your official stable personality and before you know it you start experiencing odd emotions, come over all starry-eyed and then you’re opening yourself wide.
That’s when the trouble starts.
Anyway, at the same time, I couldn’t be bothered with it all. From memory, courtship was exhausting. It sapped energy yo
u should be putting into other areas of your life and it took from other relationships. Now I had a son I couldn’t be thinking of it. I was the only parent he had. Alfie was my priority.
Plus there had been that warning. Even if it had come from my own subconscious, there were good reasons for me to err on the side of caution when I dealt with this man. Trust had to be earned. I hadn’t seen enough from him to confide the supernatural reasons for my research into Sarah Grey.
And yet how uncanny that he should have come across her years before I even heard her name. And for it too to have occurred in some convoluted and chaotic way, associated with a tragedy that in some ways mirrored mine.
His sense of duty towards old Sarah Grey had not been lost on me either. If indeed he was telling the truth. There was no reason why he shouldn’t but the voice had been there for a purpose, even if I couldn’t understand what it was.
None of this stopped me thinking about him.
How quickly revulsion had turned in on itself to become intrigue, then sympathy and finally, though unconsciously, desire.
I spent a lot of time that week going over our day together. More than was absolutely necessary. True, there was a lot to think about: the distressing circumstances of his widowing, so like mine. Though his had snatched away his children too. It made me shudder to contemplate how on earth I would have found the resources to continue living if Alfie had … I can’t even bring myself to write it now. It was no surprise that all who crossed his path sensed, on some level, the desperate bitterness and sorrow deep inside him. To his credit, he masked it well enough for it to be mistaken for sullen officiousness couched in rigid bureaucracy.
And to think he had been a rector! I could see him in a dog collar but I could not picture him about his duties: opening fetes, comforting the bereaved, officiating at funerals, weddings, christenings. How could he have carried on after Imogen and Amelia’s death, thanking God for the union of others, blessing their children?
It was unthinkable.
The harshness of his manner, I was now beginning to realize, spoke more of a willingness to alienate others. He had once been privy to all sorts of cares and woes and life-changing experiences. After your God had dealt you a hand so cruel, why on earth would you continue to worship him?
Why on earth?
And that was another thing going off in my head. I was not a believer myself and it was numbing to realize that I had been called by something that my grandmother would have termed ‘unearthly’. I had never felt beholden to the traditions of the religion into which I had been born. Though my mother was still a God-fearing Christian, my father had languished on religion’s outer circles. Dad had been more ‘progressive’ in his thinking, as I came to understand. In my childhood his scientific rationalism had me utterly perplexed, but as I matured I had come to comprehend the calm logic of his wisdom. He had been deprived of a mother when he was young and had found no comfort in the reasoning that the church espoused.
As I grew up, I began to tune in, to appreciate his way of thinking. By the time of Josh’s accident I had more or less taken on board his cool approximation of existentialism.
Which made my husband’s death all the harder to take. Of course Dad had been long gone by then. I often wondered what words he would have offered me by way of comfort. If any.
My father had been a pious man without a religion. He did not believe in the good of mankind, and having been a policeman, he had sought not to induct me into the dull, rather stupid belief that people were good or indeed innocent until proven otherwise. His years on the job had taught him that acts of evil were as random and as frequent as those of pure good. And that if there was a divine being above, it was as confused and complex as the rest of us.
Was this where Andrew was? He must have experienced some of it but, as a member of the cloth, his experience surely had led him into the abyss of spiritual misery. Why would God have taken the ones that His servant loved? Only an Old Testament deity could do that for no discernible reason. Though, knowing Andrew even as little as I did, I guessed it had been the compassionate son, Jesus Christ, that had fixed him so.
Andrew, I saw then, was a man knotted. So awry with the world and irate at its injustice.
Like me.
I understood his anger more than I could comprehend the man he had become. But that was OK. For now, we had become united under the same cause.
And that cause still sang.
That week Sarah lingered in the dark shadows of my house and stalked me in my dreams at night. I saw nothing specific, just vague resonances and feelings that surrounded me as I woke into the day.
I never felt alone.
She was there all the time.
On Sunday Mum, Lottie, David and Thomas came over. After lunch Mum and David volunteered to take the boys to the library gardens for a bit. Lottie and I cleared the plates, washed up then decided to saunter down the Broadway and join them in the park.
It was a pleasant day and we ambled along the south side of the road, staying in the shade. Lottie had calmed down about David and their debts, deciding instead to focus her irritation on Malcolm, her agent, with whom she was due to meet the following week.
‘I don’t even know what my royalties are in regard to e-books,’ she was bleating. ‘Can’t find the contract so asked him. But he’s just so evasive. I mean, it’s ridiculous isn’t it? …’
I made some sympathetic noises.
‘I’ve got to really bring some force to bear on Malc. I’ve been letting him get away with doing very little for far too long. Wow!’ She stopped in front of a boutique we were passing. ‘They are perfect.’ With one beautifully manicured finger Lottie pointed to the feet of a mannequin perched in the shop window. The shoes it was wearing were lush: aqua in colour, decorated with a velvet bow and pearls, and completed with a pair of sharp kitten heels. ‘I could certainly kick some ass in them.’
The price tag, placed discreetly between the dummy’s two feet, indicated they were way out of my price range. I sighed lightly and looked up to the mannequin’s head. ‘Nice hat,’ I said, commenting on the light straw boater. ‘I could wear that, um, down the beach.’
Then it was as if the street emptied, and all noise was sucked from the air. Giddiness came over me and an intense feeling of doom, then, as I continued to stare in some kind of hypnotic state, the mannequin turned its head to me. Its painted eyes glowed an unearthly jade green.
Sarah!
I gasped, recoiled, and glanced at my sister. Lottie was stooped over the shoes. She had been looking down and not observed the movement.
Inside the shop the sales assistant was serving another woman, oblivious.
But I was sure it moved; it was still in its new position. I stared at it again, fighting back an incredible urge to flee, when suddenly, hideously, the awful thing blinked.
Sarah.
Dear God, no. It was her again.
Reeling with shock I sprang back. Lottie stood up. ‘Hey, what’s up? You OK?’
But I couldn’t speak. My throat had become so dry that I could hardly breathe. My neck muscles were contracting, forcing out an insistent cough. I leant forwards, holding on to Lottie, spluttering as my stomach went into a spasm. I made it to the gutter just in time to throw up what looked like sallow, dirty water.
‘Sarah, are you OK? Oh God,’ Lottie placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and started stroking and rubbing my back. ‘Oh, Sarah. I’m sorry.’
I was far too shocked to speak and concentrated on my breathing. Lottie brought out a pack of tissues and began to dab my face. ‘What can I get you, honey?’
I managed to indicate I wanted some water to take away the bitter taste in my mouth so she ran off to the newsagents.
The mannequin watched on.
When she had returned I had found a bench down the road a little and got myself into a more reasonable state.
She sat down beside me and handed over the bottle. ‘What was that?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The heat? Dehydration?’
She bit her lip before she asked the next question. ‘It’s not the …? Is it?’
I avoided her question by getting to my feet. ‘Look, Lottie, would you do me a favour? I feel like I need to lie down. Can you go on ahead and bring Alfie back later?’
‘No problem.’ She was glad to be of some use. ‘You’ll be all right?’
‘Just tired,’ I told her as I crossed the road.
I was still agitated on Sunday evening. My brain would not let the incident go and kept playing it over and over again. The same fears went round my head; the tumour, or another illness, the possibility of madness, followed by the notion of the haunting.
Which one was real? Perhaps they were all real?
Even as I think back now, in the comfort of my leather armchair enjoying the view from the window of the softened October landscape, heating on full blast, those thoughts chill me to the bone: the bewilderment I felt on an almost day to day basis; the feeling that I was nearing a precipice over which I would fall to my death. The absolute conviction that someone or something was coming for me. It was a time of tumult and perhaps I was half mad with stress. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to get through it all. I guess we are more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. We never know just how tough we are until circumstances conspire to draw it from us. I didn’t know it then but my biggest battle would make the mannequin episode look like playtime.
That evening I was still fretful, so it was with some relief that I heard the doorbell go at about 9 o’clock. It was Sharon, with Corinne in tow. Their timing couldn’t have been more perfect and their effect on me was grounding. My friends were my saviours back then. I don’t know what I would have done without those small reprieves. Lost it altogether I imagine.
The girls had brought two bottles of white wine and a good measure of high spirits (they had obviously had a drink or two before they had arrived on my doorstep).
Their good humour was instantly contagious and soon lifted my mood.
