Theresa, of course, was thrilled by this dismal little tale, and anxious to get it down as quickly as possible, while the details were still fresh in her mind. In the end she dictated it to me—she said she could think better that way—and we filed it, I remember, under “Apparitions, Multiple”; and then we went down to supper.
I was used to it by now, of course, but at the beginning I’d been amazed at the nonchalance with which Theresa could thus thrust her day’s gruesome findings into their appropriate files and then, apparently, think no more about them. Didn’t she ever feel frightened, I used to ask her, all alone in the creaking, ancient cottage after I’d left her and gone back to my lodgings?
She seemed quite surprised at such a notion.
“But I’m studying the subject, don’t you see?” she would explain, “You can’t be frightened of something you’re studying. You can’t really feel anything much about it at all.”
And remembering my own experiences of getting up Hamlet, say, or Macbeth, for some imminent exam, I did know exactly what she meant. I suppose this is one of the occupational hazards of the academic life, this draining-away of emotion in the interests of exact knowledge; but it has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. It certainly had for us: it meant that Theresa wasn’t frightened, I wasn’t worried about her, and in this peaceful ambience our relationship seemed to be blossoming smoothly, easily, and without trauma or anxiety.
*
And so, when a week or so later Miss Fry, the owner of Green End Cottage, marched up to me one morning in the village street and accused me of deliberately terrorising her new tenant with stories of the cottage being haunted, I was completely thrown.
By now, I knew Miss Fry quite well by sight, though this was the first time we had actually engaged in conversation. She was not a lady who looked easy to converse with—sixty if she was a day, and very tough, pounding around the neighbourhood on a bicycle, her thick muscular legs taking the hills at a speed which put my own effete and pleasure-loving generation to shame.
So when she skidded to a stop and strode across the street towards me, all tweeds and weather-beaten indignation, I could find at first absolutely nothing to say. The accusation was so wild, you see, and so absurdly wide of the mark, that I simply could not orientate myself. It was I who had been putting all this superstitious nonsense into Theresa’s head?—I who had been filling her imagination with gruesome fancies, so that she was scared to death every time she spent a night alone in the cottage? The sheer, idiotic injustice of the charges took my breath away.
“But it’s she who …” I began angrily—and then stopped. For Theresa had, right at the beginning, extracted from me a promise that I would tell no one—absolutely no one—about the subject of her thesis. You see, she’d explained, she was employing the “Depth Interview” technique, which meant that she had to get her victims into conversation, and get them to answer her questions, without their realising what she was up to; and naturally, if it once got around the village that she was interviewing them for her thesis and writing-up everything they said about the “haunted” cottage, then their reactions to her questions would no longer be “spontaneous and unbiased”.
Her phrase, not mine. For it seemed to me (though of course I didn’t tell her so) that their reactions were probably pretty suspect anyway. Not that I’d ever seen her in action: the hours she spent on “field-work” (as she called this business of chatting-up startled yokels leaning over gates) seemed always to be just exactly those same hours that I spent brooding over my typewriter in my room above the saloon-bar, and so I can’t speak with authority, I can only guess. But my guess was that the yokels, having recovered from their first stupefaction, would have fixed their rustic gaze on that smashing head of hair and on those wide, green-flecked eyes, and would have proceeded to do whatever it seemed necessary to do to keep the goods around. Yokels aren’t stupid—that I have learned—and as soon as they discovered that what kept her chatting them up was a bit of well-chosen grue about Green End Cottage, why, then, a bit of grue they’d give her, tailored to the occasion. They wouldn’t be short of plots; after all, they all watched television, and their knowledge of Village Superstitions probably matched hers easily, werewolf for werewolf.
But I am digressing. The validity or otherwise of Theresa’s research methods was irrelevant to my immediate predicament. The point is that I had promised—no matter how light-heartedly—that I would keep the subject of her thesis secret; and so now, confronted by Miss Fry and her outrageous accusations, I was left with no way of defending myself. To have pointed out to Miss Fry that if Theresa was scared (and I happened to know she wasn’t) then she must be scaring herself, with her own research project—this would have been a breach of trust of which I’m not capable: not when the trusting is done by a beautiful girl, anyway.
So, “Er …” I said; and, “Um … well … you …” I must have sounded guilty as hell. Miss Fry simply overrode my feeble protestations, and in a loud, overbearing voice, which carried from one end of the village street to the other, she got on with the case against me. How dared I use my talent for fiction (yes, it had got around that I had come here to write)—how dared I use this talent for the perverted purpose of terrifying a suggestible young girl? (Theresa suggestible—I should be so lucky!) and trying to frighten her into giving up her tenancy of the cottage! Only a couple of mornings ago, before Miss Fry was even out of bed, it seemed that the poor girl had come knocking on her door in a state of near-hysteria, babbling of disembodied voices, of skeleton knuckles rapping on the window, of phantom footsteps and demonic howlings round and about the cottage …
And so on and so on. I knew it was all lies, because I’d seen Theresa both yesterday and the day before, and hadn’t heard a word about any of it. Why Miss Fry should go to the trouble of concocting this ludicrous rigmarole I couldn’t imagine; maybe old maids of sixty were like that? The one thing that did get me on the raw, though, was the implication that I—a serious and up-and-coming novelist in the Social Realism tradition—could possibly, in any circumstances whatever, have employed my “Talent for fiction” on such a load of out-dated Gothick balderdash! I was outraged, I felt professionally insulted, and I turned on Miss Fry in a sort of impotent fury—impotent because I couldn’t say any of the things I really wanted to without breaking my promise to Theresa.
Still, I did my best. I didn’t exactly call her a meddling old fool—something in those snapping, Colonel’s daughter eyes precluded such language—but I think the idea must have got across; because when she mounted her bicycle again she was actually trembling with rage.
“You’ll be sorry for this!” was her parting shot, as her well-brogued foot drove against the pedal. “You’ll be sorry! As the dear Vicar was telling me only last week …”
I wish now that I’d listened more carefully to what the dear Vicar had been telling her. But how was I to know, then, that it would be worth hearing? I had met the Rev. Pinkerton only once since taking up my residence here, and I had formed the opinion—a snap judgment, I have to admit—that he was crackers. Either that, or that he was a very, very holy man indeed.
It was on that first Monday morning that our encounter had taken place. I was on my way up the lane that led to Green End Cottage, full of dark thoughts about the week-end boyfriend (I didn’t know then, of course, that he hadn’t turned up after all), when I heard footsteps round the bend ahead of me; quick, loud footsteps, almost running; and a moment later, down the lane towards me, black as a crow in his clerical garb, the Reverend Pinkerton came striding. He was muttering as he came, and as he drew near I heard the words:
“Evil! … Before my very eyes … the embodiment of Evil …”
I thought at first that he was addressing me, personally; and I was just trying to think of the right reply—I mean, “And good morning to you, too, Sir,” didn’t seem to strike quite the right note—when I realised he wasn’t speaking to me at all—hadn’t, indeed, actually se
en me, for all that his pale, wild eyes seemed to be staring right into mine. He was in some sort of trance, or state of prayer, or something, I decided; and when he strode on past me without a backward look, I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was a lecture on the Nature of Evil on this, my beautiful morning.
And so, naturally, I’d written him off, poor old chap—well, not so old really—around fifty, I’d guess—but you know what I mean. And equally naturally, when Miss Fry invoked his name to clinch her crazy argument, I’m afraid I could only laugh. I wish now that I hadn’t—as I say, I wish that I’d actually listened to those parting shots of hers: but how could I have guessed—how could I possibly, at that time, have conceived—that above the Rev. Pinkerton’s grim clerical collar and beneath his sparse greying hair, dwelt the only brain which already knew the secret which would have saved me? I didn’t even know there was any secret; there had been nothing to Miss Fry’s melodramatic maunderings to make it cross my mind, even for a moment, that there might actually be something mysterious about Green End Cottage; that those ancient walls really might be harbouring forces of evil; that in that cottage where Theresa spent her days and her solitary nights there might be danger—real, deadly danger—lurking.
And so, as I say, I laughed. After all these humiliating and unfounded accusations, to which I was debarred from replying, it was good at the end to have the last laugh. I laughed as Miss Fry angrily hoisted her great tweed-clad bottom into the saddle; and I was laughing still as I watched her pedalling umbrageously down the street, her front wheel wobbling with temper, as I’m sure it couldn’t have done for decades.
*
Theresa thought it was all very funny. And I suppose it was, really. Certainly, I tried to make it sound so, because I didn’t want Theresa to imagine that I had for one moment taken Miss Fry’s far-fetched allegations seriously—particularly the bit about Theresa having knocked on Miss Fry’s door in such an uncharacteristic state of nervous alarm. Reassuringly, this was the bit that made her laugh most of all—though not until she had ascertained, with a couple of sharp questions, that I had at no point given away to Miss Fry the subject of her thesis. Reassured as to this, she relaxed, and I’ll never forget the fun we had that afternoon, lying in the long grass behind the cottage, my arm thrown lightly across her lissom body (the nearest to love-making that she would so far allow, on account of Colin, the Vanishing Wonder), and talking about Miss Fry.
Not a very romantic topic, you may object? Ah, dear reader, you don’t understand! When you are young, and carefree, and in love, there is something infinitely satisfying in the contemplation of all the people who are none of these things. People like Miss Fry, old and ugly and alone—and all through her own fault, because she had never had the courage to grasp at happiness when it was offered … had never lain in the long June grass with a man’s arms around her … never heard his whispered words of love …
I don’t know why we were so sure that she hadn’t. We’d “typed” her I suppose (in the jargon of Theresa’s colleagues): the stereotype of the village old maid was just what we needed on that golden afternoon, to enhance by contrast our own sense of triumphant and eternal youth. The mere contemplation of Miss Fry’s primness and old-maidishness made us feel deliciously and quite effortlessly abandoned, though in fact we were both limp with the heat.
“The poor old thing’s half-crazed with jealousy, you see,” Theresa explained, in her psychological-insight voice, playing smugly with the lobe of my ear as she spoke, to show how different she was from Miss Fry. “You see, having heard that I was a Ph.D. student, she must at once have pictured the sort of frumpish, lumpish creature that students were in her young days. But now that she’s actually seen me, and … well … noticed that I’ve found myself a rather nice young man who … What? … Oh, but yes, sweetie, you are nice, of course you are, I never said … No, look, darling, stop it. Remember we agreed …”
“We” was an overstatement, but I let it pass. As I say, it was very hot, and it was nice to hear Theresa’s earnest, husky voice going on and on so close to my ear.
“You see,” she was explaining, “she’s got you cast as the villain. A real, old-fashioned villain, like the ones in the novelettes of her youth. She thinks you’re plotting a fate worse than death for me …”
“I am,” I interrupted; but Theresa carried on as if I hadn’t spoken, psychoanalysing Miss Fry and her repressed urges, her fantasy sex-substitutes, until, to tell the honest truth, I was nearly asleep.
I got the gist of it, though. Miss Fry for all these complex reasons that I hadn’t really listened to, now had me cast as friendly neighbourhood rapist, whose life-style consisted of first persuading innocent girls that the cottage they’d rented for the summer was haunted, and then offering to come and protect them from the ghostly visitations of the night …
“That’s an idea!” I interposed, tightening my arms round her. “Grrrrrrrr … rrrr! Whoo-ee-oo! Come on! Be terrified! Don’t you recognise a ghost-noise when you hear it? And you an expert on Village Superstitions ..?”
“Silly!” She struggled free of my embraces; and a few minutes later, we went indoors to make tea. And even now, when I know all too well, and with exact and dreadful clarity, exactly what was to follow, I still have to say that that pot of tea we took out into the garden was the most delicious I have ever tasted. Boiling hot, as tea should be, and yet refreshing as iced-water on this scorching afternoon. I remember, too, what fun we had while we drank it; laughing, throwing bits of grass at each other, and generally fooling around.
And that night, for the first time, Theresa did not send me away when dusk fell.
*
How can I describe what happened next? Where can I begin? Not with our love-making, because it still hurts to remember how marvellous it was, and how close it seemed to bring us, beyond anything I had ever experienced. Perhaps the place to begin is afterwards—just a few minutes afterwards; half an hour at most.
“Let’s make some tea,” said Theresa, swinging her legs out of bed and feeling around for her slippers on the dusky floor. “I always seem to feel like a cup of tea at this stage.”
From the depths of the bed, I murmured something, which was neither yes nor no. It wasn’t that I disliked the idea of a cup of tea; it was just that I wanted to go on lying here, feeling perfect, for a bit longer. And I wanted her to go on lying here, feeling perfect, too.
But already this was no longer an option. Once one of you has said “Let’s make some tea,” then they’ve said it, and there is no going back. Theresa found her slippers, and padded off out of the room; and as for me, I pulled the blankets up a bit and simply went on lying there, utterly content, watching the stars coming out one by one through the small dusty square of the window. This is it, I remember thinking. This is what life is all about. This is total, absolute happiness.
From where I lay, I could hear Theresa moving about downstairs … the faint clink of crockery … the thump of the big kettle … the opening and shutting of a dresser drawer … the nostalgic, heart-warming sound of a woman’s footsteps back and forth across a kitchen floor.
And then, suddenly, I heard her scream.
I was out of bed and down those stairs before she could have drawn a second breath; and I found her, not in the kitchen, but in the “parlour”—that gloomy little front room that by day was bathed in eternal dim green light from the rampant vegetation over the windows, and which now, by night, was almost completely black, only a thin tracery of moonlight finding its way through the tangle of leaves, and throwing a sort of silvery basket-work of light across the old, warped boards. By this faint, irregular illumination I was just able to make out Theresa’s figure—still whitely naked; she had not troubled to add a dressing-gown to the slippers when she got out of bed—crouched in a corner of the room.
“Darling!” I cried, stumbling towards her through a dim cluster of intervening furniture. “Darling, what ..? Who ..?”
By
now I had reached her, my hand was on her shoulder, and I was aware that she was shuddering from head to foot, racked (as I thought for a moment) by violent sobbing.
But it was laughter. The relief was almost as big a shock as the screaming itself had been. I half shook her, in a mixture of thankfulness and indignation.
“What the hell ..?” I began.
“I—I’m sorry, darling,” she gasped, between paroxysms of laughter, “but it was so funny, you see! First finding this awful great knife”—here she brandished before my eyes an evil-looking weapon nearly a foot long, and glinting dreadfully in the moonlight—“It was in the dresser-drawer. I’d never seen it before, it really gave me a shock; and then, suddenly, I couldn’t help myself thinking—Miss Fry!” Here she was once more overcome by giggles. “Poor old Miss Fry, if only she’d found it! She’d have been absolutely certain that it was the very weapon with which you threatened me when you raped me this evening ..!
By now, I was laughing too. I found myself catching her mood, and in a moment—both of us still stark naked—we were giggling and fooling.
“Your honour or your life!” I yelled, in a melodramatic, villainous sort of voice, brandishing the knife in mock-savagery. “You are at my mercy, gentle maiden! Tonight I shall have my will of you ..!”
Her screams were most convincing; as also was her portrayal of a panic-stricken virgin defending her honour. Louder and louder she shrieked, dodging in and out among the shadowy furniture, while I followed in mock-pursuit. A chair went crashing over … then a vase. The sound of splintering glass sobered me.
“Enough, darling!” I exclaimed, reaching out a restraining hand towards Theresa, who was still shrieking, and darting hither and thither, as though quite carried away by her own play-acting. I tried to grab her by her arms … by her waist … but each time she somehow slithered from my grip. I began to feel alarmed.
A Lovely Day to Die Page 8
