by Sarah Rayne
Dan had described his house’s history in the same chapter: how its origins went back and back like twisted black roots into the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom that had once been called Bernicia. Thornycroft Hill had been a sea fortress, and of course Thornacre was miles from the North Sea and there was no rock face within view. No, but the barren wastes of the Northumberland landscape were here, said Oliver’s mind. And the desolate, rolling moors of Bernicia, where the ancient beasts of paganism and myth once prowled and from the look of this place might still do so.
He switched the ignition on again and reversed erratically down the narrow road, back to the Black Boar.
He shied away from going into the inn’s crowded dining room or the bar, even though the landlord was encouraging about the degree of conviviality that he would find if he did so.
‘You’d be made welcome at any of the tables, Dr Tudor, that I do know.’
‘It’s very kind, but I’d rather not.’
‘A few games laid on after everyone’s eaten, and a bit of a sing-song – good fun it’ll be.’
Dan would probably have entered into the spirit of the celebrations with enthusiasm and discovered a few kindred spirits among the people in the dining room – he might have discovered a female companion to spend the night with as well. In any event, he would have enjoyed the motley group of people. But to Oliver the prospect was terrifying. He thanked the landlord but said he would prefer to go up to his room, and asked if it would be possible to have a tray of food sent up. ‘Anything will do – I don’t want to put your kitchen staff to trouble. An omelette, or even soup and sandwiches . . .
But the landlord was genuinely horrified at the idea of anyone dining off sandwiches on Christmas Day. Oliver had barely had time to don a dry shirt and was still towelling his hair from the rain when there was a knock on the door and a tray appeared, laden with a plateful of sliced turkey which was flanked with roast and creamed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, and buttered carrots. A generous helping of plum pudding lay under a lidded dish, with brandy sauce, and whoever had set the tray had dug out a bottle of claret which was apparently presented with the landlord’s compliments.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Oliver, helplessly.
The little waitress asked if there was anything else she could do. Did he need any help to dry his hair – shockingly wet he’d got, hadn’t he?
‘No, truly, I can manage perfectly well.’
‘I’ve got a hair dryer – my room’s only up the stair. My name’s Michelle, by the way.’
‘It’s very kind of you, Michelle, but I really won’t trouble you.’
It was nice of the little waitress to offer the loan of a hair dryer. Oliver remembered that northern people were supposed to be famous for their hospitality. Here was proof.
He finished towelling his hair dry, and set the pages of manuscript on the small table under the window. He found his glasses, and while he ate the very good Christmas food, he went on reading Dan’s book. He thought it was good. He thought this was a publishable, potentially successful book. If Dan never reappeared – this was a truly appalling idea, but it had better be faced – if Dan never reappeared, Oliver would try to get the book published for him. He had himself written and had published a couple of academic textbooks, one about Lady Jane Grey and one about the early years of Elizabeth Tudor. They had been scholarly and there had been much cross-referencing and considerable listings of various primary sources. The indexing had taken nearly as long to sort out as the actual writing, and Oliver had enjoyed it all immensely. But he had absolutely no idea how you went about getting fiction published. Dan’s agent would be the person to ask, of course. He read on, increasingly absorbed.
A second waitress collected the tray midway through the afternoon. She seemed inclined to linger, smoothing down the bed, which as far as Oliver could tell did not need smoothing down, and perching on it while she asked if he was having a nice time and whether he would maybe like a bit of company for an hour or so.
The staff here really were enormously friendly, although the fact of it being Christmas Day might have something to do with it. Even so, he must remember to express his appreciation to the landlord when he checked out. But for the moment he did not want any company; he wanted to get through this wretched Christmas Day as quickly as possible and reach a time when he could investigate October House. In the meantime, he wanted to finish reading Dan’s manuscript. He said, as politely as possible, that he had a great deal of work to do. The waitress seemed to find this a matter for regret. If he should want anything, she said, anything at all, he must ring the bell and ask. He might like to ask for her personally; her name was Sharon.
‘I’ll remember,’ said Oliver firmly, and held the door open so that she could manipulate the tray.
Dan’s Rosamund and the companion-cum-friend, Anne-Marie, were being drawn deeper into the web of intrigue. Anne-Marie had been enticed away by the evil Margot and her fate was still uncertain, although if Margot’s track record was anything to go by, it would be unpleasant. She was locked up in a dank wash house adjoining Margot’s house which, in the best tradition of these things, was a rather isolated place, surrounded by trees. October House, thought Oliver, with the familiar chill. This was reporting before the event, not after it.
He paused, and glanced towards the uncurtained window. Rain was driving against the glass again, and even at four o’clock in the afternoon it was necessary to have the lights on. He shivered and got up to draw the curtains. The radiator could apparently be turned up or down, but Oliver knew from experience that the minute you touched a radiator something fell off or started to leak or even rendered the entire system out of order, and so he left it alone. There was a small two-bar electric fire which he switched on, and there was also a drain of claret left in the bottle. He poured this out, and with the room filling up with warmth now, stepped back into Dan’s remarkable story.
Anne-Marie was safely hidden and Margot was intending to wait for the hue and cry surrounding the girl’s disappearance to die down before going for Rosamund. In the meantime, she was considering the idea of an accomplice.
Oliver paused before turning the page. What kind of accomplice would Dan have given his archvillainess? That traditional witch’s familiar, a dwarf? Or maybe a deaf mute so that he could not betray her if things went wrong. Assuming that things did go wrong. Dan would undoubtedly give this contemporary fairy story the correct, moral ending, which meant that Margot could not be allowed to get away with any of her evil. It was remarkable how strongly Margot came off the page and took shape in the small bedroom. Oliver thought Dan might have had a bit of trouble controlling her, and then pushed this rather sinister thought firmly away.
While Margot was weighing ways and means and considering who to inveigle to her side, the venal Dr Bentinck moved centre stage. Dan had written a scene where Bentinck sat at Rosamund’s bedside, projecting his rather warped lusts on to her, turning back the sheets with slow, sensuous anticipation, and feasting his eyes on her near naked form. It was curiously distasteful to read about Bentinck slavering over the unconscious Rosamund, but Oliver recognised this for an obligatory passage of raunchy sex. He was pleased to find there was no rape, although Dan had allowed the man a few caresses, dwelling chastely on tip-tilted breasts and slender thighs seen through transparent silk, all of which twisted Bentinck’s face with agonised desire and then sent him stumbling from Rosamund’s room in a state that Dan described as ‘perpendicular with lust’. Bentinck, whom Oliver heartily disliked by this time, went hotfoot and steaming-loined into the nearest town to seek out a wine bar where girls were to be had for the asking. He found the wine bar all right, it was a kind of poor man’s Soho strip joint, pulsating with throbbing rock music and leather-jacketed, mini-skirted girls on the prowl. It sounded a bit sordid; Oliver would not have been seen dead in such a place and hoped Dan would not either, but it suited Bentinck very well. He downed several large brandies befor
e approaching a female with a passing resemblance to Rosamund and persuading her into the back seat of his car. Oliver was very glad indeed that when it came to the crunch Bentinck had drunk too much to give a good account of himself (in fact to give any account of himself at all), and was beginning to feel sick from the brandy. The girl was raucously insulting about his stubbornly soft manhood but at least she got out of the car before Bentinck was sick over himself. Oliver was pleased that Dan had given the slimy doctor such a humiliating experience.
Chapter Twenty-six
On Christmas Day Mrs Caudle came to visit Imogen.
Quincy had not known she was coming, and the first she knew about it was when Porter-Pig said in a false, bright, won’t-that-be-nice voice that they would be having a visitor at their Christmas dinner.
Mrs Caudle was very friendly and Quincy began to wonder if she could have dreamed seeing her in the graveyard that day, talking to her dead son and gloating because Imogen’s mother had been buried alive and because Imogen had been shut away in Briar House. Mrs Caudle talked to all the people at her table while they ate, and said she enjoyed her lunch very much indeed. She had never tasted such good plum pudding, she said. She had brought presents as well: the most beautiful cream silk dressing gown for Imogen, and boxes of biscuits and chocolates for the other patients. There were bottles of sherry for the nurses. For Quincy, whom Mrs Caudle said she remembered from Briar House, she had brought a thick drawing block, a really good one, with what Mrs Caudle said was hand-milled paper. With it was a box of watercolour crayons – aquarelle crayons, they were called, said Mrs Caudle; professional artists often used them for outdoor work. She had heard all about how Quincy had come to Thornacre with Imogen – Matron Porter had told her – and she thought it was very kind and loyal. Mrs Caudle had heard from Dr Sterne that Quincy was something of an artist and the Christmas present was a small thank you from Imogen’s family.
But later on, when Mrs Caudle leaned over Imogen’s bed and took her hand, Quincy knew that nothing was really any different. Mrs Caudle hated Imogen, just as she had done in London. And then quite suddenly Quincy understood.
Mrs Caudle was one of the giants, she was a female ogre. As soon as Quincy saw it, she did not know why she had not seen it before, because although her disguise was very good, she was unmistakably an ogress, exactly like the ones in the east wing. She had put on a human mask and human clothes and crept up out of her own world into Thornacre.
The invitation for Quincy to go out to tea with Mrs Caudle came as a surprise. At first Quincy was not quite sure what was meant; tea in Bolt Place had meant your evening meal – beefburgers and chips, or fishcakes or sausages. In Briar House and Thornacre it was called supper and you ate it later, so that tea happened at five o’clock and was a cup of tea and a biscuit, or bread and jam or honey. Quincy listened carefully to find out, and it appeared that Mrs Caudle meant this second kind. There was a rather nice tea shop in the village where she was staying; they had very good homemade scones and jam, and there was a small art gallery attached. On the day after Boxing Day there was to be an exhibition of paintings by local artists, and perhaps Quincy would like to go to the gallery to see the paintings. It would be a way of repaying some of Quincy’s kindness to Imogen, what did Quincy think?
What Quincy thought was that this was exactly what giants and ogresses did. They pretended to be kind and they promised you treats, and then, when they had got you in their houses, they locked all the doors and leapt on you and did bad things to you. She did not want to go out to tea with Mrs Caudle at all because she was Imogen’s enemy – Quincy knew this definitely, and she was frightened. But it might be a way of finding out what Mrs Caudle was plotting. There was that thing about knowing your enemy and if she could find out what was going on she might be able to explain it to Dr Sterne. She would not tell him yet; she would wait until she had something definite. Evidence, it was called. She would go out to tea and she would try to get evidence so that everyone knew about Mrs Caudle, and then Imogen would be safe.
The mention of paintings was intriguing; it might be a big pretence or it might be real. Quincy had never been to a place where you could look at paintings, and she wanted to very much. And probably she would be safe in a tea shop and painting place because there would be other people there. She looked at Dr Sterne for guidance and saw him smile and nod slightly. So she said to Mrs Caudle that she would like to go out to tea and she would like to see the paintings, and thank you very much. She tried to say it how Imogen would have said it but it did not really sound right.
Mrs Caudle said she would look forward to their little expedition. Would half past two be a convenient time? Half past two the day after tomorrow.
Mrs Caudle turned back to Dr Sterne then and Quincy had the feeling of being dismissed. This was perfectly all right; she would do some more drawings of Imogen’s secret forest, which was the next best thing to being there herself. Dr Sterne would look at them later on.
Leo thought he had managed to hide his impatience with Thalia Caudle. To do the woman justice she seemed genuinely interested in Thornacre’s work; she had asked if it might be possible to see more of the place after lunch. She had done a little work among the mentally sick in London, she said, only a very little, and mostly it had been to do with fund-raising. But she would be interested to see some of the methods used here and it might be that she could be of some help. She supposed, she said, with a slightly ironic glance at Leo, that Thornacre was not averse to accepting donations.
‘Good God, we’ll take anything anyone offers,’ said Leo at once. ‘I’ll give you a list of Thornacre’s most pressing needs here and now, if you like.’ He smiled at her. ‘If you’ve really got time to spare, we could have a potted tour now.’
They started in the dayroom, which Leo had tried to brighten up but which was still furnished with cast-off chairs and tables, and curtains that did not draw properly, and a rattling old radiator that did not give out very much heat. The new heating system was still being installed. A plumbing firm from Blackmere had been given the job, but they were not very efficient and they were taking a long time over it.
Some of the patients were sitting vacantly in front of the television where they had been put, which infuriated Leo and was a painful reminder of his first sight of Thornacre’s patients: most of them systematically drugged into stupors, almost all of them dumped, sacklike, in unheated rooms or left in bleak corridors. He switched the television off angrily. But at least some of the patients were seated at one of the large tables, drawing or making plasticine models or playing draughts.
The wretched Porter woman came steaming in within minutes, of course. She switched the television on again, saying it was a shame to turn it off, it was nice for the patients to watch, it perked them up no end, and it was really quite a tonic to see them laugh at some of the comedy programmes or the cartoons.
Leo had told her that the set was to be kept off, except for the designated programmes, mostly during the evening. He had explained that when the patients laughed, they were almost always copying someone laughing on the television, and that he wanted to stimulate their minds and make them think for themselves, but she had either not understood or forgotten. He was losing patience with her fast; the nurses did not like her much – Leo had heard them making up rude limericks about her when she was out of hearing – and he had almost decided that she would have to go. She would not be any loss to anyone.
Thalia Caudle seemed genuinely interested in everything. She asked to see the work that was going on at the large table: messy painting with thick, primary-colour pots of poster paint on acrylic boards, and the making of scrapbooks and flower montages. Leo was trying to get some of the more withdrawn ones to illustrate their fears, in the way that Quincy could sometimes do, although none of the others had a hundredth part of Quincy’s talent. But some of them were responding to using colours or fabrics or even dried flowers, which was encouraging. Sometimes he made them join i
n loud sing-songs – one of the nurses played the piano – and held little talent competitions at which the patients could sing or recite. Two of the therapists had even started a small writers’ group, encouraging patients to read aloud stories they had written and persuading the others to listen and comment. Leo had been very pleased, both with the modest success of this and with the therapists’ initiative in setting it up.
Thalia listened – really listened, Leo admitted – and made a few comments. Her attention seemed particularly taken by Mad Meg McCann and Snatcher Harris. ‘Our two longest inmates,’ said Porter, as proudly as if this was a geriatric home where longevity was praiseworthy.
‘Really?’ said Thalia, politely. ‘What about Meg’s foraging expeditions? Are they official?’
‘Well, we probably aren’t as strict about Meg as we should be,’ said Leo. ‘But she doesn’t do any harm when she wanders off and she always comes back.’
‘Loaded with new bags of rubbish?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. We’re trying to ration her to a few possessions at a time – she derives security from them. We’re trying to find other ways to make her feel secure, but it’s a long job.’
‘Dr Sterne is so patient,’ said Matron Porter. ‘I tell my nurses we’re lucky to be working with him.’
‘I’m sure you are.’ Thalia looked thoughtfully at Snatcher Harris who was leering at her. ‘I find that an interesting case as well, Dr Sterne. Has he always been like this?’
‘Probably,’ said Leo. ‘We’re working on him but I suspect the speech centres of his brain were damaged, or simply weren’t developed fully, before birth. I think that he actually understands more than he lets on, the old rogue.’
