by Sarah Rayne
‘You think so, Dr Sterne?’
‘Certainly. The only thing to do with tragedy is to overlay it with other things. To build a bridge away from it. Several bridges, if possible. And work – especially if it’s interesting work – is always a very good bridge.’ Leo waited. Thalia Caudle was not ringing him up to ask his advice about coping with bereavement.
‘I’ve taken a house in Blackmere,’ said Thalia. ‘It seemed as good a base as any, and also . . .’ A slight hesitation. ‘Also,’ said Thalia, ‘I hoped I could see Imogen. I’ve been concerned – we all have. Has there been any improvement?’
‘Not yet.’
‘She’s still – asleep?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wondered,’ said Thalia, ‘whether I could – could I visit Imogen over Christmas? It seems dreadful not to when I’m near, even though she won’t be aware.’
Leo thought quickly. There was no real reason why Imogen’s family should not visit her; in fact there was every reason why they should. He quenched the faint, unreasonable flicker of distrust, and said, ‘Yes, of course you can visit her, Mrs Caudle. The patients are having a Christmas lunch at one o’clock. You would be very welcome to come along and join that.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ll expect you at around twelve thirty then.’ Leo forced himself to add, ‘I shall look forward to meeting you again.’ He waited for her to say, ‘Oh, and so shall I, Dr Sterne,’ which was usually what these ladies said.
Thalia said, crisply, ‘Thank you, I will see you then.’ And rang off.
There was no point in speculating about Thalia Caudle or the effect she might have on Imogen. Leo put the phone call from his mind and reached for the file of patients’ notes. As he began to read and review treatments, he became absorbed, as he always did, and for a while he was able to forget Imogen and concentrate on the others: on the odd fey child Quincy, haunted by God alone knew what horrors from her early life. On scatty old Meg McCann, and how he was trying to enter her crazed world, painfully and pitifully made up of little collections of rubbish, and peopled with acquisitive monsters who wanted to take everything away from her.
There was Llewellyn Harris as well, poor, pathetic Snatcher, warped and deformed by the syphilis his mother had contracted before his birth and ignored, and which Harris had ignored as well because he had not understood. Leo was finding Harris increasingly interesting. The ugly little creature presented most of the classic signs of tertiary syphilis; he had the sore eyes and the typical outward-turning nostrils – ‘opera glass’ nose. Leo thought that the brain lesions had probably destroyed Harris’s speech centres, but what fascinated him were the occasional glimpses of a bright, logical mind somewhere under the grunting randiness. It was glib and probably trite to conclude that Harris was being revenged on his mother by plunging his own diseased body into every female under sixty, but Leo thought it might be quite near the truth. He suspected that the Snatcher would be impotent if he was ever faced with a willing female, and several times lately he had actually toyed with the idea of an experiment, of hiring a prostitute and making Harris face his anger. Playing God again, said his mind. And what would it tell you that would be of any value?
He did not care that these poor, driftwood creatures were rough and unattractive, or that their problems were squalid, or even that sometimes they had caused their own problems. He did not mind when they were aggressive or whining or disgusting, and occasionally dangerous, and he did not mind about the vomit, the seizures, the blood-flecked foam or voided urine, or the dry white patches of stale semen on Snatcher Harris’s trousers. Ten minutes in a hot shower sluiced it all away in any case.
The clean private-home patients with families and friends had never attracted him; it was the homeless and the friendless and the drop-outs whose cracked and disturbed minds he wanted to heal. The Snatcher Harrises and the Mad Megs and Quincys of the world. He wanted to find out why they were like they were and what had happened to flaw them. He wanted to enter their warped worlds and help them fight their nightmares and slay their dragons.
And when their blind need of him fell about his shoulders like Dante’s cloak of lead, and when there was not enough money to do all the things he knew ought to be done – at Thornacre and everywhere else – he still had the sudden energy, the unpredictable sunbursts of magnetic radiance that could make up for hours and weeks of profitless study or discouraging work. When that happened it was as heady as pure oxygen and so violently satisfying it was like a mental orgasm.
Mental orgasm. Imogen. Full circle once more.
He got up to put the files away and, leaving his office, crossed the deserted hall and went up to Imogen’s room. As long as his feelings for her did not cross the line into real sexual awareness, as long as the mental orgasm did not become physical and Svengali did not turn into Baron Frankenstein, it would be all right.
Svengali . . . An idea began to form in Leo’s mind.
Chapter Twenty-five
Quincy had never gone back to the east wing, and she had never told anyone what she had seen there.
She had not even told Dr Sterne when he found her later that day, huddled in a frightened little ball in a corner of Imogen’s room. He was so kind that she had wanted to cry, only she had not dared because if she had started she might never have stopped.
The words ogre and giant could never be said aloud, not under any circumstances. If you said things out loud it could make them real, and if she was not very careful the creatures she had seen beyond the black iron door would break loose; they would come stamping and shouting out, snatching people up as they came and carrying them off to do bad things to them.
Once upon a time, there had been a lot of ogres and giants in the world; they had walked about openly and everybody had known who they were and been able to keep out of their way. But they had become secretive over the years and they had gone into hiding. Probably there were hundreds of hiding places all over England and all over the world, and she had found one of them by mistake.
Dr Sterne had not forced her to tell him what had frightened her, not then and not since. He had smiled the nice smile and said he understood that some things were better not said aloud. But whatever it was, she might try drawing it sometime, he said. Drawing did not count in the way telling counted, did she remember about that? And he would rather like to see her pictures of whatever had upset her so much.
This was a good idea. Quincy had drawn the Cattersis-beast several times and nothing bad had happened; in fact Dr Sterne had been interested in the drawings. He had studied them and talked about them as if they were important. He had said she had a very great gift; perhaps quite soon they might talk about her having proper lessons and learning about techniques and the draughtsmanship of drawing, and about all the famous people in history who had painted beautiful pictures. And there was what was called commercial art as well: book illustrations and record sleeves, and posters and advertisements. People could make a living from such things, did she know that?
Quincy did know it, of course, but she also knew that it was not the kind of thing that anyone from Bolt Place ever did. In Bolt Place drawing and painting had been silly time-wasting, not work at all. Why don’t you do something useful? Mother had said. Quincy could not explain this to Dr Sterne, but the idea of learning about painting and drawing was the most entrancing thing in the world.
It was while Quincy was sitting by Imogen’s bed that Dr Sterne came in to talk to her. He sat on the other side of Imogen – Quincy felt as if they were both guarding Imogen which was a very good thought – and he explained that he had had an idea for a new treatment. It was something that might help him to reach down into Imogen’s mind and wake her, he said. It might not work but it was worth trying. The thing was that he needed Quincy’s help.
Quincy would have done anything in the world to help Imogen wake up. She said so at once and waited to hear what Dr Sterne’s idea might be.
‘I want you to
take Imogen’s hand, and try to see the world she’s in,’ said Leo, and he looked at her so intently that Quincy had the oddest idea that he was seeing into her mind. ‘And then I want you to draw it for me.’
They stayed in Imogen’s room to try out the idea. Dr Sterne put some very gentle music on. Quincy did not know the name of it, but he said it was the kind of music that would make her think of drowsy summer afternoons with bees humming over scented roses, and of winter nights by the fireside, with frost outside and the stars sharp and clear against a black black sky, and a series of footsteps all neatly printed in the crispy snow, one after the other, going on and on. She would see all these things just listening to the music, he said, but most of all she would see the footsteps, and they would go on and on and on. She must concentrate on them, crisp, even footprints that went forward and forward and on and on and up and up . . .
He gave her an injection of something as well – a long word that Quincy did not know. The injection did not hurt and the music was lovely, like rippling silk being drawn across your mind. Quincy took Imogen’s hand, and felt herself tumbling down and down.
There was a moment of black velvet nothingness, an overwhelming absence of sight and sound and feeling, and a tiny shred of panic uncurled in Quincy’s mind. I’m failing. And then there was the faintest ripple of something, and a tug of response – Imogen? – and then she was there.
She was at the centre of an ancient forest where it was never quite day and never quite night. To begin with, the pouring blue and purple shadows were blurred, but after a few minutes they grew clearer. That might be the injection or the music, or it might just be that she was getting used to the dimness. The secret forest was an old, old place, it might be a hundred years old, or even a thousand. You could feel the oldness and you could smell it. On the ground were pools of misty green light, like the dark cloudy water you saw in old stone-edged ponds, and scattered about were broken marble statues with moss growing over them and the faces worn away. There were jumbly bits of ruined stones as well, as if once upon a time there had been a house or even a castle here, only it had crumbled away little by little over the hundreds of years, and then the forest had grown up.
The trees were very tall and in places the branches were thickly twined together so that it would be difficult to get through unless you had a hacksaw or an axe. The branches were a bit frightening; they were like long poking fingers that would reach down and brush your face and tangle in your hair as you walked under them. The tree trunks were knobbly and twisted and harsh – Quincy thought the word was gnarled, and the gnarling looked like faces, and some of the faces were solemn and wise but others were leery and sly.
Imogen was at the very heart of the forest. Quincy could see her, half hidden in the soft, slanting rays of purple twilight pouring in from above. She was lying on the ground with thick moss under her head and trailing ivy tendrils all about her like a curtain. She was very quiet and very still. There were tiny pinpoints of light dancing directly over her head – Quincy thought they might be glow-worms or fireflies. As they darted to and fro they left little sprinklings of light everywhere. Beautiful. Quincy was just trying to see the patterns the firefly creatures made as they danced when someone took her hand and Dr Sterne’s voice said, ‘Quincy. Quincy, I think that’s enough. Can you hear me? Open your eyes now, Quincy. We’ve done enough for today. Open your eyes and come back.’
Coming back from that enchanted forest was like being wrenched out of a wonderful dream, but Dr Sterne’s voice could not be ignored, and so Quincy opened her eyes and blinked and looked around her. There was the narrow room in Thornacre, and the high, black iron bed with Imogen lying under the sheet, and the chart at the foot of the bed that told how long she had been asleep. Quincy could not read it from here, but she had heard one of the nurses say that at this rate there would soon be a hundred days on the chart.
There was no telephone listing for October House, and nothing under the name of Caudle. Oliver supposed that the phone, assuming there was one, would be registered in the name of the actual owner, and he had no idea what that was.
He looked around his small bedroom. Rain was lashing against the window panes but in here it was warm and safe. It was nearly the shortest day of the year; a day when you wanted to draw the curtains, curl up in front of a warm fire, and shut out the cold and the encroaching dark. He remembered that it was Christmas Day.
It could not be helped. Oliver shrugged himself into a duffel coat, wound a scarf round his neck, found his glasses for driving, and went down the stairs. From the bar came the sounds of revelry, and in the small oak-beamed dining room several family parties were assembling. The entire ground floor was redolent with the scent of cooking. Roast turkey and all its accompaniments.
His car had been standing outside in the rain for a good eighteen hours and it took a bit of starting. Oliver blew on his hands for warmth, banged the accelerator down hopefully a few times, and at length the engine chugged into life.
A thin, icy rain was falling as he drove out of Thornacre, and every house he passed had lights burning at the windows. Each one was a tiny lit stage, with families in varying stages of Christmas celebrations: tables were being set for meals, and there were trees with winking lights and paper decorations inside, and holly wreaths outside on front doors. The pundits said that Christmas was a fraught time for many people, a time of tension, what with so many families being awkwardly split these days, what with single parent families and unemployment. Not everyone enjoyed spending time with relations and not everyone could afford to buy presents, or extra food. Not everyone wanted to be cooped up in the kitchen, cooking.
But driving past the houses, Oliver had only the impression of happiness and warmth and normality in each one. He and Dan had almost always been together at Christmas, either in London, meeting Dan’s friends, some of whom Oliver knew, most of whom he liked; or in Oxford, where Oliver’s colleagues would include him and Dan in family meals. It suddenly felt vastly and painfully wrong to be out here like this, completely alone. However much you enjoyed solitude and your own company, if you were alone on Christmas Day you felt wrong. You felt isolated. Oliver liked his own company; he was used to being on his own and comfortable about it, but now he felt appallingly lonely. He should have turned this whole thing over to the police at the beginning. He was mad to be out here on Christmas Day, chasing a wild goose or a mare’s nest through a driving rainstorm.
He nearly missed October House, but Blackmere was even tinier than Thornacre village and there were only a very few houses that met the description. Oliver eliminated them carefully as he drove. But when he finally found the wrought-iron gates with the stone pillars and the carved sign that said October House, the place looked deserted. Oliver parked on the grass verge and walked back to the gates. The rain was edged with ice now as if it was turning to sleet, and he hunched his shoulders against it and dug his hands into his coat pockets.
The gates were uncompromisingly locked and they were high and strong. There was a high brick wall and a thick hedge. Oliver contemplated climbing over the gates and decided against it. There was no legitimate reason for committing trespass; there were any number of reasons why Thalia Caudle should have taken a house up here, the most obvious and innocent being to visit the girl who was in Thornacre. If that was the case, Thalia had almost certainly gone to Thornacre itself to spend Christmas Day there. Oliver tried to remember if Juliette had said how old the girl was, and thought she had not.
The only thing to do was to return to the Black Boar and get through the rest of Christmas Day. He would come back here tomorrow or the day after. Perhaps he could leave a note, asking Thalia Caudle to contact him at the Black Boar. Yes, that was a good idea. There was a postbox set into the gate. He could say quite openly that he was looking for his brother who seemed to have vanished, and that the trail had led him up here. In the meantime, he would have to make sure that it really was Thalia Caudle who was living up here. The
local post office or village shop might tell him.
The visibility on the way back was even worse. Oliver hunched over the wheel, peering through the dark afternoon and the lashing rain. His glasses wouldn’t stay put and he had to keep pushing them back up, which was a nuisance. What with that and continually having to wipe condensation off the windscreen it would be easy to miss a turning here, in fact he was beginning to think he had missed it. Yes, he had come too far along this road, which meant he had to turn round somehow and go back. Damn.
It was as he was reversing cautiously into a side road that the car’s headlights picked out the sign on the grass verge. ‘Thornacre House. Private road.’
Dan’s nightmare mansion.
Oliver looked at it for a moment, and then swung the steering wheel across and turned towards it.
The malevolent ugliness of the real thing was like a sharp, jabbing blow under his ribs. Oliver stopped the car abruptly and sat staring up at the house. A cold darkness eeled around his mind.
Thornacre House was a grim place, even viewed from the road through a silver beaded curtain of rain and through the old trees that had grown up around it. Oliver stared at it and thought: how did Dan describe it so accurately? There were the ill-proportioned wings, the eastern one larger than the west, and there was the humped roofline, giving the place a lumpish, grotesque appearance, as if a hunchbacked giant was crawling across the landscape on all fours. It was an ogre’s castle, it was Macbeth’s ruinous Dunsinane or Bram Stoker’s Carfax Abbey.
And it was Rosamund’s sea fortress on the jutting rock face. There to one side was the haunted west wing which Dan had used for chapter fifteen, in which Rosamund, with the companion who had determinedly and faithfully accompanied her, had hidden from the blood-hungering Margot. Dan appeared to have created this companion as a kind of female second lead, a back-up heroine to keep the reader’s interest during Rosamund’s long inactivity; he had made her a distant cousin of the family, a girl who had been callously abandoned by her husband and who was therefore broke and glad of a bit of practical help. Oliver thought she was rather an interesting character. He suspected that Dan was quite fond of her.
