(2011) What Lies Beneath

by Sarah Rayne

  I listened to all this solemn discussion, and thought: he won’t beat it if I can help it! I was in touching distance of the Cadence empire by that time. Everything was being held in trust for Saul’s twenty-first birthday and I was one of the trustees, along with Colm, who was less than useless, Serena, who hardly ever left the manor, and a couple of doddering old men in London. I could manipulate the whole lot of them easily. Meetings were held at Cadence Manor three or four times a year, but they were a travesty. Colm said very little, Serena was usually too unwell to attend (or said she was), and the two London fossils deferred to me over everything. I used to prepare my proposals in advance and pass neatly written sheets round the table. They were so relieved to have the work done for them, they agreed to anything I put forward.

  The concern they all had, of course, was whether the legacy that had sent Julius mad would send Saul mad, too. Mad people certainly could not be allowed to inherit huge banking concerns and estates. And if Saul really did end in being pronounced insane, who was the next in line to inherit? Colm was the nearest, but he could be discounted. He did not want it and he was not capable of dealing with it. So who, but Colm’s son, quiet reliable Jamie?

  Having read this far, my unknown reader, can you doubt that I manipulated the treatments Saul was given? By that time there were antisyphilitic drugs, in particular one called Neosalvarsan. Small, bullet-shaped tablets. So easy for Saul to swallow. So easy for his unscrupulous guardian to substitute with harmless pills of bismuth or soda, flushing the real pills down the lavatory. I looked solemn and sad when old Dr Martlet or his colleagues shook their heads over the progress of the disease in Saul, and told one another that after all there was no clear cure, that Neosalvarsan was not the cup of life or the elixir of health that had been promised.

  They would keep trying, though, and in the meantime the best thing for Saul was to live quietly in the country, tutored and taught in his own home, all under the care of his widely read and selfless cousin Jamie. They would hope, they said, that the seeds of madness did not bear fruit.

  I nodded in agreement, and scribbled my understanding and acceptance.

  I had no intention of trying to cure Saul. I meant to foster the seeds of his madness to bear an entire orchard of fruit.

  As for my own madness . . .

  Any thoughts I might have had of the darkness vanishing after Edirne were soon dispelled. Shortly after we arrived back in England, the familiar pattern reinstated itself. There would be weeks – often even months – when I would dare to hope it had retreated for good, and then would come the familiar wrenching pain in my mind, and the sensation of invisible ogre-hands twisting my whole being into a totally different shape.

  I always managed to shut myself away in my bedroom until the spasms were over, but I could never be sure that the Crossley woman would not decide to mount a cleaning operation and that Hetty or Dora would not appear with mops and buckets and dusters. Eventually I solved the matter in a rather strange way.

  The inhabitants of Priors Bramley had to walk across Mordwich Meadow to St Michael’s most Sundays, and St Anselm’s was used for a brief service only once a month to comply with some ancient law. The old village church had widespread dry rot, which nobody seemed prepared to tackle, or perhaps nobody could afford to. It needed the kind of restoration Crispian would probably have offered to fund, but I was not going to let Saul’s trust (which I intended one day to be mine) be plundered to eliminate dry rot in a crumbling church. I never fathomed the intricacies of the rule about the services – the Church of England can be as twisty as a corkscrew – but I do know they had to hold a service there no fewer than ten times a year or the church would have become deconsecrated or something. That seemed to worry people. I wondered if they visualized Lucifer and his legions forming an impatient queue on Crinoline Bridge, waiting for the moment when this small and obscure village church would step outside the sanctified protection of the English Church and the powers of evil could go pelting down Mordwich Bank and take up gleeful residence.

  In practical terms it meant St Anselm’s was empty for long periods of time. So, when I felt the darkness start to claw at my mind, I slipped through the gardens, out through the manor’s gates and along the road to its shadowy solitude. I seldom met anyone during that brief walk: the shops and houses were further along and the church had gradually become wrapped in its own solitude.

  But here’s a strange thing. Once inside the church, with the cruel violent Hyde persona tearing at me, I could never stay in sight of the altar and the various religious symbols near to it. I simply couldn’t. I always went up the narrow steep stairway to the organ loft, and that’s when I was truly safe.

  It was an extraordinary feeling to crouch in that small space with the silent shadowy church all round me and the towering shape of the organ at my back, and to fight the ravaging demon in my mind but it’s what I always did. And then, one dull grey afternoon, I took more notice of the organ. That was the day I discovered it still had some life in it, although not much, I have to say. Investigating warily, I found I could pump air into the pipes – only a very little that first time, but enough to make it shiver into life. I stood there for a very long time, then, with daylight fading and grey-green shadows stealing into the church, fumbling awkwardly for the notes, I played a chord. As the sound resonated in the enclosed space, I felt as if something huge and invisible had opened up inside my mind and something dark and malevolent had flown out. I promise you it was so vivid an experience I could almost hear the beating of wings on the air. It’s not too wild a fancy, is it, to think it was my own inner madness taking flight?

  I should explain at this point that I could read music in a modest way. As a child I was taught to play the piano. Crispian was taught as well, but although he banged conscientiously at the keys, he was never much good. I don’t know that I was much better, but seated in that deserted church, my mind still bruised, those lessons came back to me. And the next time I went to St Anselm’s I played more than a couple of hesitant chords.

  As with most things, the more I played, the easier it became. I bought a gramophone for Cadence Manor. I said it was because I thought Saul might respond to music, but of course it was really for me.

  Then I discovered a stack of abandoned music in St Anselm’s vestry and embarked on several of the pieces – warily at first, and then with growing confidence. Initially I had gone to St Anselm’s to hide, but once I began to play, the music engulfed me, and I no longer cared if anyone knew I was there.

  There was a good deal of Bach among the music I found, but there were several other composers. Early on I came upon a piece of music called The Deserted Village. It had been written by an Irish composer somewhere in the mid-to-late 1800s, and it was actually an opera, but at some time in Priors Bramley’s history, some organist or choirmaster had transcribed the overture for organ. The score was handwritten, but perfectly legible. I didn’t play it – not then – but I was intrigued by the title, and by the scribbled note at the top stating that the opera had been based on an Oliver Goldsmith poem. So I wrote to one or two of the London stores, asking if a gramophone recording of the opera was available. I didn’t expect much, but within a few days one of them replied, saying they had a recording of the overture and part of the entr’acte. It had, they thought, been part of a set of recordings of the whole opera, but sadly the others had been lost. However, if I was interested in purchasing this single record they would be very happy to dispatch it. A relatively modest price was quoted, with an air of suggestion about it, almost as if they expected me to challenge it or even haggle.

  I didn’t challenge and I didn’t haggle. I bought the recording. And as soon as I listened to it, something deep inside me responded. I cannot explain it – I never have been able to explain it – but I understood what the composer had tried to convey: the journey from sunlit tranquillity into darkness. And from that darkness, there’s an even deeper descent into a savage loneliness, as the
village called Auburn is abandoned and left to its ruined grounds where birds forget to sing. Only one person remains in Auburn – ‘The sad historian of the pensive plain’ – scraping a meagre living from the few things that still grow there.

  When Saul was six and the Great War had been over for a year I wrote to the vicar at St Michael’s church in Upper Bramley, suggesting the Cadence family would like to install a new church organ at St Anselm’s.

  We did, I wrote, appreciate that the church itself was in a poor state of repair and in need of some help, but for the moment funds did not permit addressing that. So many investments had been affected by the war. However, as the vicar no doubt knew, the present organ was also in a poor state of repair. Would it be permissible for a new one to be installed, entirely at our expense? Sadly, three members of the family were in frail health and unable to make even the short journey to Upper Bramley for the various services, but the family had a shared love of music and considerable solace and pleasure had been derived from listening to it in the peaceful surroundings of St Anselm’s. Would the vicar be so kind as to approach his bishop and seek approval to this proposal?

  The vicar did approach his bishop, and from the tone of the reply sent three days later, the entire diocesan board had almost fallen over themselves in their eagerness to accept. Of course they saw the veiled promise that the dry rot might later be dealt with, and of course they were going to accept this initial gift.

  The organ was duly commissioned and installed in 1920, and the bishop even agreed to the engraved plaque I requested for the framework. A Christmas service was held there with a couple of other churches for its dedication. I didn’t attend, but Serena and Colm did, taking Saul. The servants went as well, very smart in their Sunday best. Flagg said afterwards that it had all been very tasteful, Mr Jamie sir, very nice indeed.

  When the small flurry of excitement died down, I was able to play the new, beautifully pitched organ whenever I wanted. No one ever disturbed me: in a general way the details of what had been done to me had got out, and I think people hearing the music probably thought, Ah, there’s poor Mr Jamie from the manor, poor tragic soul. Mutilated by those heathens, but finding comfort and solace in God’s music.

  None of them could have known there were times when the struggle was so intense I had to break off – times when I would sob with the pain and the sheer bloody strength of the clawing tearing madness . . . It wouldn’t let go, you see. It simply wouldn’t let go. And at times it became too much for me. There were nights when the evil greedy Hyde triumphed and I would slink through the lanes and the villages around Cadence Manor. It wasn’t so easy to find victims; it was the depths of the country and people were not so ready to go out and about, particularly after dark. Also, in the years following the war, the country was still recovering and it took time for life to return to a semblance of normality.

  But in any society and in any time there are always a few loners – girls, occasionally men – who can be found if you look in the right places. Railway stations are a good source; it’s easy enough to wait outside a railway station and watch for a solitary traveller. Bramley Halt was quite a busy line for a good many years and in those days of which I’m speaking – the twenties and then into the early thirties – girls still came to the country to visit or to work. There weren’t many ‘big houses’ left by then; the war had swept away so much of the class divisions and it had certainly swept away much of the old feudal system. But there were some. Girls would come to the area to take up a position as parlourmaid or housemaid. And if one or two failed to arrive at their destinations, no one enquired too deeply. Perhaps there would be an irritable letter sent to the agency who had engaged them, but other than that people would simply say how unreliable girls had become since the war. It was annoying and inconvenient, but the agency could supply another one.

  I generally got rid of my victims’ bodies by tumbling them into the back of a goods wagon. God knows where they ended up, but wherever it was, it was miles away and no connection was ever made with Bramley or Cadence Manor.

  But it wasn’t until Saul was sixteen that I suddenly saw how I could use my own darkness to get him out of the way.

  I was returning late at night from a very unsatisfactory expedition. I had spent most of the day fighting the darkness, but around ten o’clock that night I had given in and slipped out of the manor by the side door. I found a girl all right, but she fought me like a tiger and, as the fishermen say, she was one who got away. But before she did so, she clawed my neck and hands quite severely. I slunk back to the lodge, furious with her and myself, the darkness still biting at the edges of my mind, my wounds stinging.

  I went through the gates as quietly as I always did, and through the shrubbery. I didn’t trouble to be particularly furtive; it was after eleven o’clock and no one was ever about at that hour.

  Except that someone was on that occasion. Colm was walking along the drive, and he saw me at once. His mild eyes peered at me in surprise. He said, ‘Jamie? You’re covered in blood. And your clothes are torn.’

  I was reaching for the slate and charcoal pen I always kept in a pocket – although I have no idea what I would write because what can you write about being covered in blood with your clothes torn and muddied at eleven o’clock at night? But he said, in a voice I had never heard him use, ‘Jamie – is it Saul? Has he been violent in some way?’

  Saul. There it was, you see, all laid out for me, without my having to do a thing. I made a gesture of deep sadness, then nodded.

  ‘I was always afraid of this,’ Colm said after a moment. ‘That violence would erupt. Can you tell me what happened?’

  I did tell him. I scribbled it all out on the slate, and what I wrote was nothing more than the truth – except that I made it appear that Saul had been the attacker, not me. Saul had slipped out of the house, believing himself unnoticed, I wrote. I happened to have seen him and followed at a distance, not wanting to intrude on his privacy, but wanting to make sure all was well.

  ‘That’s like you,’ Colm said, his weak eyes teary with emotion. ‘And you’d try to protect him, I know that. You’d have kept this from us if you could. If I hadn’t walked down to the gates tonight, to clear my head after working late . . .’

  The doddering old fool! But I kept to the story he had already half-handed me. Writing quickly, I described how I had seen Saul pounce on the girl, but when Colm asked if I knew who she was I shook my head firmly. I had managed to pull Saul off her, I wrote, although he had resisted me fiercely. Here I made a brief gesture, indicating the deep claw marks and the blood.

  ‘And the girl?’

  I wrote that she had run into the darkness.

  ‘And Saul?’

  That question nearly did floor me. Then I wrote, ‘Should be in his room by now,’ and Colm nodded as if this was acceptable. I saw that the image of me ushering Saul back to the manor and his room had taken root in his mind.

  ‘This is dreadful,’ he said.

  I wrote, ‘Do we talk to him? Challenge him?’

  I saw him flinch, and smiled inwardly. Colm would never seek a confrontation.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary. Providing we can be sure—’

  ‘That it doesn’t happen again?’

  He stared at the words for several moments, then said, ‘Exactly. And if we can be sure it won’t happen again . . .’

  I wrote, ‘It won’t. I won’t let it happen again.’

  But of course I did.

  Later

  Earlier I spent half an hour trying to break through the wall at the back of the cupboard I found nearly seven days ago. But it seems to be a solid wall, and there’s no means of breaking through. I tried, of course. I tore my nails and chipped my knuckles, and I hardly dare write this, but at the end of that hour I had worked free a small section of wood panelling. I’m too exhausted to do any more now and my fingers are too sore. But I shall return to it soon. Oh God, if only I
can get out that way, if only . . .

  Because if not, in eighteen hours’ time, I must face my death.

  If I’m to be honest, I’d have to say it was the years of the 1930s that finally brought the realization that Cadences and all that went with it had slipped away from me.

  It wasn’t that I failed in my attempts. I intended Saul to be pronounced insane and unfit to inherit Cadences and he wasn’t far from that. But over the years, Cadences itself diminished. It didn’t go with a bang, but a whimper. By the time Saul was eighteen it was no longer the golden glittering prize; it was a husked-out shell, barely making a profit. I don’t think there was one specific cause that killed it. The American Stock Market Crash in 1929 – the infamous Wall Street Crash – wiped out billions of dollars in a single day, and the financial markets throughout the entire world suffered as a result – except, I believe, in Japan. People said the Crash put an end to the roaring twenties. It certainly began the end of prosperity for Cadences. And even if Cadences could have rallied from that, the Second World War came and finished the task. And all the things I did – all the lives I took and all the lies I told and deceits I practised – I needn’t have bothered.

  It’s sad and ironic to look back and know all of that.

  But for the moment I have returned to my desk and these pages, and it looks as if I have spaced out my story very well indeed, because I see that all I have left to write is the account of what happened with that village slut Brenda Ford.

  The fact that I went after Brenda Ford surprised me then, and it still surprises me, even ten years afterwards.

  At the time of the Brenda Ford incident I was fifty-seven, if anyone wants to know. That’s not so ancient by today’s standards. People of fifty-seven are capable of all kinds of remarkable things. Politicians and bankers seem to dodder on into their dotages. Look at Winston Churchill. He was getting on for seventy when he rallied Britain to win the Second World War.