Night After Night

by Phil Rickman

  ‘I’m ready for anything, Fred,’ Grayle says wearily.

  ‘It’s what you might call an historic sex allegation.’

  ‘Please tell me it’s not Defford.’

  ‘No, it’s… it’s better than that. I mean, not better at all, but you know…’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘Woman called Karen Grant. I should know her, but I don’t. Lives in Cheltenham.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She was Harry Ansell’s personal secretary. She’s saying he raped her.’

  ‘Wh—?’

  Two other women who worked in the Cotsworld office but who don’t want to be named have made similar allegations. Not rape, but certainly serious sexual assault. You still there, Grayle?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When I say historic sex, it’s actually not that historic. All in the period since he lost Trinity. Last one was the day before he hanged himself.’

  ‘Why… why’s this coming out now?’

  ‘Because Karen Grant, it was more a date-rape thing, she went out for a drink with him because he seemed depressed and went back with him to his flat and made him some coffee, and then… She’d always had a lot of respect for him, and then when he hanged himself the following evening…’

  ‘She thought it was a one-off.’

  ‘What was she going to do, tell the inquest about it? She’s married. And then, as the shock of his death wore off, the other stories started to come out from women in the office about sexual advances, and she began to feel guilty in case there were others out there who’d been damaged by Ansell and were afraid to talk about it. And her father works for The Times, some executive position. Look, I don’t want anything from you, Grayle. I just thought you’d like to know. It’s a kind of closure, in a way, isn’t it? If Harry Ansell killed himself because he thought it was about to come out… and he’d be facing arrest, long court case, several years inside?’

  ‘Or…’ Grayle swallows some water, coughs. ‘Because he couldn’t face what he’d become. Or even understand it.’

  ‘This could open the floodgates. Other women over the years. Blokes just don’t become abusers. Do they?’

  One answer is, not on their own, no. She keeps another to herself.

  65

  White sadness

  THE CAMERAS MOVE playfully around a chamber reborn. There are new old chairs, new old tables. New old light. The wrought-iron candle hoop has gone, replaced by one the size of a carriage wheel, with more than twenty glistening tongues to probe the deep reds and ochres in the new wall hangings, bringing to surreal life the fantasy bestiary with lions and monkeys and unicorns.

  But failing to animate the near-black eyes of the half-shadowed woman in the alcove. In the live gallery, Grayle grips her chair arms.

  ‘Oh God, what is that?’

  At first she thought it was Meg the actress, now she can see it isn’t an alcove either.

  ‘Ha,’ Defford says. ‘Even Grayle. Good-good.’

  ‘Got me earlier,’ Jo Shepherd says. ‘Leo had it painted. It’s an actual painting, on wooden panelling.’

  ‘And here’s me thinking Holbein retired.’

  The woman is life-size in a dull wooden frame with scrolling around the top. The candles light the ruby necklace, the ruby pendant and the band of rubies in her French hood. But, no, the light doesn’t touch the eyes.

  Defford strolls away along the row of monitors, satisfied.

  ‘Cost an unknowable amount,’ Jo says to Grayle, behind a hand. ‘Based on several of the existing portraits, but essentially…’

  ‘Essentially a new portrait of Katherine Parr.’

  ‘Done amazingly quickly. I was there when he was on the phone to the artist. He’s going, Make it like one Henry VIII would’ve had on the wall opposite his bed to get him in the mood.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Wouldn’t have it in my house, but then I’m not a sixteenth-century king.’

  Or a TV producer who’s decided a house should be haunted by two specific women. Grayle doesn’t like this picture – too secretive, too heavy with hindsight. Holbein actually would not have portrayed her this way. It’s too good. This is a woman pregnant with precognition, a Katherine Parr who knows she’ll die too young. KP shadowed by Trinity Ansell.

  ‘Jo,’ Grayle says, ‘I need to tell you—’

  ‘Sssh.’

  Defford’s back, sitting down between them.

  ‘So you like it.’

  Grayle says nothing.

  ‘We love it,’ Jo says.

  Cindy recognizes the choral music emanating from the walls: the Agnus Dei, from a mass written for Henry VIII by Thomas Tallis.

  It settles upon him like a slow blossom-fall, a white sadness. Trinity played this same music. Trinity was having it played in this very room on the occasion of his unfruitful second visit to Knap Hall. As if God himself wandered amongst the guests.

  The music fades as they walk in from the dining hall, Roger Herridge gazing around.

  ‘This is all for us?’

  ‘Just for you, Roger,’ Ashley Palk says. ‘They must’ve noted how badly your appreciation of the Tudor aesthetic was offended by the place as it was. Who is this, do we know?’

  She stands before the portrait which is just a little taller than she is. Roger joins her.

  ‘Anne Boleyn, possibly. Though not one I’ve seen before.’

  ‘Now she haunts widely, doesn’t she, Anne Boleyn? Hmmm… don’t suppose it’s possible we’re in some lesser-known wing of Hampton Court, or somewhere like that?’

  ‘Almost certainly not. No, we could be anywhere. Henry and Anne travelled around quite a bit when they were first married. But, yes, someone does seem to be giving us a pointer here. A clue, perhaps, to the identity of Big Other. Cindy? Any thoughts?’

  Oh dear. Is he permitted to recognize this woman? Perhaps not yet.

  ‘Well now, fond as I am of Anne Boleyn, poor dab, I don’t somehow think it’s her.’

  Helen Parrish looks at him, uncertain… but about what? Finding that bird in the hearth… it’s affected her. Something has been dislodged. Confidence shaken, defences down. After they were locked in the dining room, Helen drank no wine at dinner, only water, listening to the movements from next door, like a poltergeist at work. The housekeepers doing more than taking away a dead bird.

  The fire on the hearth, Cindy sees, has been enlivened by blazing birch and sycamore, inside the thighs of oak.

  But, for all this and the extra candles, it seems, to him, no brighter. Not at all.

  He knows what this is about. They’re remaking Trinity’s room, though not in a way obviously recognizable from the pictures in Cotsworld. Different hangings, different pictures. The false wall, of course, full of eyes.

  And the new portrait, explicitly Katherine Parr.

  A mistake. But what can he do?

  Soon as tonight’s programme starts consuming Defford and Jo, Grayle slips away, corners one of the Jamies and gets him to find her all the rushes from the ouija session. In a small viewing unit behind the reality gallery truck, she sits alone with the technology, scrolling through shots from three or four cameras.

  This is new stuff, all these angles on it. She only saw the chosen pictures on TV, while dealing with Marcus on the phone, that queasy conversation about Abel Fishe and what he might have done to the dead KP. Now, she’s getting a sequence on it, from when Helen says,

  Someone’s doing this.

  What did she mean by that? Much of this got forgotten because of what happened afterwards, but it looks like Helen was the first to suspect the planchette was being deliberately pushed. And she didn’t want to be a part of that?

  Rhys Sebold’s right in there with a put-down.

  But it’s a spirit, surely. Perhaps even Diana? Anything’s possible in a haunted house, Helen, you know that.

  Which is what makes Helen so mad she insists Sebold take her place at the table, and this is whe
re it escalates. Grayle finds three different views of the spelling out of the letters A… N… G. Sebold, Ahmed, Herridge, Ashley and Cindy each with a finger on the moving triangle. It’s impossible to judge from any of the shots if anyone in particular is pushing. You had to be there. You had to have a finger out there, and even then…

  Herridge saying, ‘A N G? Angela?’

  OK, what’s happening to the planchette now, in the split second before the table rocks? Where’s it headed? Back to the centre, and then…

  One shot was probably not used, because it doesn’t cut easily to the best shot of the table rocking, the planchette launched into the air.

  But it is the best one: a lovely angle, at ouija-level, from the bank of letters, so you can watch the planchette, five fingers still on board, as it makes its final journey, cruising along the surface of the board like it’s returning to the G. But not quite… a touch to the left.

  And left of the G from this angle, is H.

  For ANGH…

  Oh God, Oh God, this is far from conclusive, but…

  For the fifth time, the table tips, and the board falls from under the planchette and even Ashley does a little scream.

  *

  From the temple of the live gallery, the house looks warm and opulent, just like in the old Cotsworld picture-spreads, as the residents listen, without comment, to a mystery man. A man unseen by viewers, a chaired silhouette, his back to the camera but speaking with Jeff Pruford’s voice and telling the story of two women in a picture on another woman’s phone.

  Dead now, Grayle realizes. All three of these women. None named, all dead. No picture to see, except the one on the wall which seems to represent both Katherine Parr and Trinity Ansell and is, in Grayle’s view, not a good idea, but what does she know?

  Meanwhile, in the first hour of tonight’s programme, the Ozzy story is getting dealt with, with several flashbacks to the upsetting of the ouija board and the hurling of the bottle, and Ashley Palk is still the fount of common sense.

  Defford, watching, is looking as happy as you could expect.

  For a man who doesn’t know the half of it. Doesn’t know that the Ozzy situation could be even more complex before tonight’s programme is over. Doesn’t know about Angharad. Doesn’t know what he’ll be reading in tomorrow’s Times about Harry Ansell, who only wanted to watch.

  Panic claws at Grayle’s gut. She really needs to say something and throws a glance at Defford, who turns and frowns as her phone starts ringing, without permission, in the live gallery. She raises her hands in apology and takes the phone outside, where the aggressive fog hugs her thin sweatshirt with this almost carnivorous glee.

  ‘Grayle Underhill?’ Northern English accent, like Ozzy’s. ‘Neil Gill. Ahmed’s writing buddy. Where is he?’

  ‘I’m sorry…?’

  ‘Ozzy. Where is the bugger? Everybody’s talking about him on the box, but we haven’t seen him onscreen, not personally since he threw his wobbly. Which we keep seeing, gratuitously, over and over again, and that Scottish woman being smug. But no Ahmed. Then, you ring me saying you’re worried he might harm himself or something. And then he does that routine with the mirror. Which I figured you knew would happen, so that was all right, relatively speaking, but now I’m not sure.’

  ‘Uh, no. No, we didn’t know that was gonna happen.’

  ‘So what’s going on?’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was gonna ask you that. Ozzy stopped, uh, talking to us a while back. You saw Ashley Palk stitch him up, and you saw him failing to respond to that in the way we and presumably you would’ve expected.’

  ‘And then you let your biggest name walk out? Halfway through the week? That doesn’t strike me as value for money. I keep trying to call him, never an answer.’

  ‘We still have his phone.’

  ‘Well give him his phone back, please.’

  ‘We can’t do that. Listen…’ No way around this now. Grayle looks for privacy and shelter from the cold, finds none and starts walking, in the narrow alleyways between cabins. ‘He left. He left us without a forwarding address, in the night. As a person, he’s free to go; as a contracted professional, it wasn’t what we expected. He didn’t have a car here, but it’s not a long walk to the nearest town.’

  ‘You’re saying… Ahmed did a runner? On foot?’

  ‘That’s how it looks, yeah. Our boss, Leo Defford, lives in hope he’ll drive calmly in again before weekend. Personally, I’m less… let’s say I have issues.’

  ‘You haven’t told the police?’

  ‘Why would we? You really think he’d want us to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Neil, uh, it’s clear something’s bothering you. Can I…?’

  She can almost hear him thinking, tossing his options around.

  ‘All right, go on.’

  ‘You saw what happened before he smashed the mirror and demanded we take him out the house. That strike you as out of character?’

  ‘It does now.’

  ‘You’ll know about the woman he kept claiming to have seen.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘White coat. Injuries. And the initials ANG. Rhys Sebold thinks he was on the edge of a nervous—’

  ‘What the fuck does Rhys Sebold know?’

  ‘His best friend?’

  ‘I’m his best friend.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I guess there are things I don’t know either.’

  ‘Oh, there are, darlin’, bloody right there are. He’s a clever lad, Ozzy. You offend him, he doesn’t punch you in the face, he digs a hole around you that you can’t see till you fall down it, and he doesn’t care how long it takes. I need to call you back, all right? Somebody I need to talk to.’

  ‘Who? Listen, I’m putting my ass on the line here.’

  ‘I want to find out if he’s talked to his agent. We have the same agent, and if he’s pissed off he’ll have called to check his legal position. He’s funny but he’s not daft.’

  ‘No, listen we already…’

  His agent. Defford said he’d be taking care of that. But Defford, like many reality-TV producers, doesn’t like agents. Avoid them – one of the ground rules, next to always stay one step ahead. Agents, in general, don’t like unscripted, openended reality TV; therefore it follows that Defford hasn’t spoken to Ahmed’s.

  ‘What did you say?’ Neil Gill’s asking.

  ‘Just talking to someone else. Sorry.’

  ‘Let me get back to you.’

  ‘Make it soon,’ Grayle says.

  The air smells acrid and hostile. Her throat tastes like she has a cold coming on.

  She walks back between the furry lights. All this is nothing to her. She could just go back in the live gallery and sit and watch and let Defford do what he wants – like she can stop him anyway. And maybe nothing will happen, no one living will be hurt. So why, she’s wondering, am I working for the dead?

  66

  Landmark

  THEY ARE BEING introduced to their alleged unseen companions by a perfectly presentable, honest-looking fellow – ex-soldier, he says – sitting in a tall-backed chair in front of the portrait of Katherine Parr. The soldier is the first outsider to enter their chamber. He tells them about a woman living here, a modern woman, well-known, and another, even more famous woman who lived nearby half a millennium ago. About the same age when they died.

  Are they supposed to guess at identities? Cindy wonders.

  ‘How old?’ Roger asks.

  ‘Thirty-six, going on thirty-seven.’

  ‘Like Diana,’ Helen says, looking startled now in the wobbly light. ‘God almighty, why does all this seem so portentous?’

  Ashley pushes her light blond hair behind her ears.

  ‘You’re saying this is not a good place to be thirty-six?’

  Cindy thinks, Oh dear.

  ‘Only, I actually turned thirty-six last week,’ Ashley says, ‘Didn’t realise it was such a… psychic landmark.’

 
The absent Ahmed, no doubt, would have felt obliged, at this point, to make some slick remark, but no one else does. Ashley laughs lightly, as Ashley must. You’ve changed, though, lovely, Cindy thinks. Won’t admit it, even to yourself, but you have.

  The soldier talks, guardedly, as some soldiers do, about what he knows of the history of the unnamed house, about a banquet so posh that photos of the hostess have to be secretly snatched, and Cindy edges his chair inside the cloak of shadows in the corner between the Gothic door and the screen of old-ship’s oak. It smells musty and oily and old as if the wood’s seafaring years have seeped into its woody sinews. Cindy sits with his hands, palms down, on his knees, listens to his breathing, and sets up the steady pulse of an inner drum.

  Normally, a real drum would be used, see, usually the Celtic hand-drum, the bodhrán. There would be preparation, perhaps fasting. Alas, no time. He pulls the shadows around him.

  After a while there comes a quivering and a fluttering and here’s his totem bird, Kelvyn Kite, taking flight. Freed from his stage-suit of fluffy wings and absurdly glaring pool-ball eyes, his inner raptor is released to seek out Belas Knap, the most ancient and aloof sacred centre, at the highest parts of the Cotswolds. Where all this, surely, begins.

  Call me a coward, Trinity wrote, but I stayed behind the wall. I felt sick… couldn’t go any closer. I thought it would help me to touch it or something, but suddenly I knew it didn’t want to help me, not at all.

  No, lovely, it wouldn’t. You had no relevance to it. Its rules are old and stiff and primitive. It knows nothing of love.

  The red kite circles, waiting for him. Eager. They haven’t done this for a while. Patience, Kelvyn. Out of practice, see. Doesn’t know any more if he’s a man of psychic substance or a mere charlatan. But then, as Emrys Fychan always said, the uncertainty of it remains central to the experience. You must walk the horizon’s rim in that indefinite place – y plas amhenodol – where past and present meet and the future might just, in some small way, respond to you.

  In his cloak of shadows he’s above the fog, above the hill. He can see the half moon, like a segment of apple. Down below, the remains of the hill fog trail a grey aura around the burial mound, the shape of a plump, ground-nesting bird, a pheasant perhaps, between trees and sheep-cropped fields. He starts his chant following the drum.