Sweetheart, Sweetheart

by Bernard Taylor

  “Why?” I said.

  “Mmm? Why what?”

  “Why does a ghost—stay . . . ?”

  “I believe,” he said after a moment, “and so do many others—that a ghost—or spirit—lingers on in a place simply because the soul isn’t really aware of the body’s death. The body, the flesh has gone, but the soul, not knowing, stays . . .”

  I darted a sideways, incredulous glance at him, but he didn’t react. He wasn’t joking. He kept his eyes steadily on the road and calmly continued:

  “The soul doesn’t stay intentionally just for the purpose of—of haunting a place. It just—continues to live there. I suppose in a way it’s—lost—but isn’t aware of it. And it’s not necessarily evil—a ghost—any more than is the soul of a living person . . .”

  “She is,” I said. “She is evil.”

  “If such is the case”—he gave a half-shrug—“then in life she probably had that same evil within her.”

  “Yes . . .” And I thought about De Freyne. Had she killed him as I had inferred from Colin’s­ letter . . . ? One thing I was sure of, though: “I do know,” I said, “that after she died she somehow managed to kill my brother rather than let him leave.”

  “Love can take some strange forms.”

  “Yes, and now she’s turned that same love on me.” I stubbed out my cigarette. “She’s totally evil.”

  When we were within a few miles of Hillingham I said:

  “Please, from now on don’t say anything about it. Just do what you have to do. Just—go in there and do what’s needed without discussing it with me . . .”

  He turned his eyes from the road and gave me a brief questioning glance.

  “She’d hear us,” I said. “She’d listen. And she’s not just confined to the house. She moves around. Yesterday she got as far as the cemetery.” Thoughts of Colin’s­ mutilated body came into my mind. Don’t think about it. Don’t. “As soon as we get close,” I said, “she’ll be there. She’ll be listening to us and watching our every movement.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, and smiled. He wore his casual bravery like a cloak and I felt sure that inside he, too, was not unafraid. He must have sensed my doubt. He gestured to his briefcase which lay on the back seat. “Believe me, I’m prepared for any emergency.” He looked at his watch. “And I’ll get it all over with as soon as I can. You want to get back to your wife, and I want to get back to mine.” He paused, showing his uncertainty. “But mostly I just want to get it over with.”

  Just after we got off the motorway he stopped the car at the edge of a little country road where the trees grew thickly on either side and the sun came through the leaves in moving, dappled patches. He shifted the gear lever to neutral, turned to face me.

  “When we get there I’ll go in alone. You stay outside.”

  The relief I felt at his words was like oxygen to a suffocating man. Even so I protested. “Shouldn’t I go in with you? You won’t know your way around . . .”

  “You can tell me that, and what I don’t know I’ll find out.” He shook his head. “No, it’s better that I go in alone. You’re—involved. Too involved. It might make things more difficult.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged, my gesture not giving away the great gladness I felt; while she was inside the cottage I never wanted to go in there again.

  I watched him as he opened his bag, his hand moving inside, expertly checking, sorting. His fingers moved aside velvet wrapping and I glimpsed a crucifix, a glass vial. The sight of the objects made my heart pound. “Are those things necessary?” I asked. “I mean—we’re not dealing with witches, are we—or the devil?”

  He snapped the case shut. “I’m sure we’re not—though I don’t see how you can pigeon-hole things so easily. Anyway, as I said, I have to be prepared.”

  He drove the car up the drive and parked it outside the garage. Wordlessly we got out and climbed the side steps to enter the garden by the lawn. I saw, with relief, that no one else was about. Timpson, it appeared, had finished his work on the house roof and had begun fixing slates on the roof of the garage; the ladder was propped against it and I could see the new slates on the flat bit above the window. I had no idea where Timpson was—or Jean for that matter, and I dreaded the possibility of them returning at the wrong moment. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it, not right then.

  Rogers, walking at my side, stopped and just stood looking. I halted a few feet further on, watching his face. In his sports-jacket and open-necked shirt he looked more like a rugby-player than a priest. He gave a close-mouthed smile, shook his head. “It all looks so peaceful. And so beautiful.”

  I turned, looked at the cottage, my cottage. It did look peaceful. Who could ever have believed that such a setting—all of peace—on the surface—could possibly harbour such malevolence? All around, under the late morning sun the poppies, brilliantly red, gently nodded and trembled in the light breeze that brushed the hillside. And there were the roses, too—so pink, so yellow, so white, so white, so white . . . Their perfume was all around us, as positive as the birdsong.

  I turned back to him. Was he going to stand there forever? Prompting him to move I gave him a brief description of the layout of the cottage, and still he stood there. Then, at last, with a smile he said, quite breezily:

  “Well, better get on, I suppose.”

  I watched as he moved towards the back door. In the doorway he turned.

  “Her name—it’s Helen, you said, right?”

  “Yes.” I frowned. “Yes.” I wanted to add: Don’t you realise that she’s listening to us, watching us right now! Don’t say anything else. Just get on with it . . .

  He saw my frown and read it correctly. He said: “It’s all right,” and I felt anger and impatience surge in me. Did he know what he was dealing with? He waved a nonchalant hand. “You just relax. I’ll call you when it’s—when I’m finished.”

  I nodded. He gave me a last smile that was meant to be encouraging, then went in and closed the door.

  I was afraid that if I stayed close to the cottage I might hear him, hear his voice, hear some kind of incantations, calls upon Helen’s spirit to be gone. I was afraid of having further knowledge of her presence there, endorsement of what I already knew and feared so much; afraid of acknowledgement of that unreal reality, so at odds with the mellow beauty of the morning. Simply, I was afraid.

  I turned, walked slowly away over the grass. The scar on my arm itched and I rubbed at it, forcing myself not to scratch it. The birds went on singing. Bees hummed amongst the roses, living up to their reputation for industry, and a solitary wasp zinged past my nose and disappeared into the little studio. Through the dusty window I saw Helen’s self-portrait with the great daubs of paint over the face. I tore my eyes away and let my feet lead me down and out under the arch into the thicket. Following the rough path I made my way among the trees and brambles and the masses of rhododendrons. A flash of red before my eyes gave me my first sight ever of a red squirrel; poor red squirrel, so sadly depleted by his grey cousin from over the water. Seeing me, he stopped, frozen, on the bough. I stopped as well. Sometimes, I had once read, they died of fright. Not this one, though; in another second he had gone, leaping away into the trees. I walked on again, the gentleness and innocence of the creature lingering about me like a little fog. A bird sang, closer than the others, and with a distant kind of pleasure I recognised the yellow plumage and the song of a wood warbler—thanks to Helen’s bird book; and so back to Helen again; not that she was ever very far away from my mind. Forget her, I told myself, concentrate on the peace.

  But it wasn’t my peace, I knew, no matter how attractive it might be, no matter how it touched me. And never could be; not this peace, here . . . And when I reached the clearing ahead of me I knew, irrevocably, that it was so.

  Coward to the last I skirted the clearing, avoiding even a glance at the rough grave that lay to the side of the summer-house. I had told no one of it except for Ian Rogers; I wou
ld tell no one else. Ever. After tomorrow I would be away from it for always, and those bones there—as far as I was concerned—would lie undisturbed, rotting, until they became the earth from which they had sprung.

  Beyond the clearing I walked slowly on down to the pond’s bank. The marsh marigolds still sun-dotted the water’s edge, and I thought again of how Reese and I had dragged Jean Timpson out and laid her on the grass. Now I sat down on that same grass, lit a cigarette. I had no idea how long the Reverend would be; I tried to prepare myself for a long wait.

  I wondered what She­lagh was doing now in London; probably in the National Gallery; I pictured her—wandering through the Rembrandt Room . . . She­lagh. She’d been so lucky; in any one of her “accidents” she could have fared much worse. But her luck wouldn’t have held out much longer, I knew that; how could she, so gentle, so good,—yes, good—ever be anything of a match for that other who was so powerful in her wickedness?

  My thoughts went on . . .

  I had been sitting there for so long, I suddenly realised. Rogers would have done his work by now, would have been shouting himself hoarse and getting no response from me. Quickly I got to my feet and hurried up the wide track through the thicket that led to the gap in the orchard hedge. When I eventually got to the lawn I expected to see him there, waiting for me, ready and impatient to get going. There was no sign of him.

  I stood hovering, not knowing what to do. He had said not to go in, to leave it all to him, yet surely he must be through by now. Hesitantly I called to him.

  “. . . Reverend Rogers . . .”

  There was no answer, and the silence that surrounded me seemed somehow deeper than it had been before. I could no longer hear the buzzing of the bees. No birds sang.

  The back door was still closed. I went towards it, stood for a moment with my fingers around the handle, then drew my hand away. Looking in at the kitchen window everything appeared to be just as it had before. In Colin’s­ study the same. Because of the sunken garden I couldn’t see into the living-room, so I continued on and walked round to the front of the house.

  I could see in then all right.

  The room was a shambles, and there, sprawled, supine, Rogers lay with his head up against the wall.

  30

  My knees felt weak and loose-jointed as I ran back round to the door at the rear. I reached for the handle. And stopped dead.

  As my fingers got to within an inch of it the handle turned. And now the door swung slowly open.

  Come in, she was saying. Come in . . .

  For a long time—it seemed an eternity—I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I was terrified.

  But I had to go in. I had to. I couldn’t leave Rogers lying in there, alone.

  But he wasn’t alone in the house, was he? She was there . . .

  Still I stayed, like some statue; aware of my hoarse breathing as I panted through stiff lips, the pounding of my heart; aware of her, waiting for me. Come in . . . Come in . . .

  Then I told myself—reason, some clearer thought returning—that she had never tried to harm me; her hatred was not directed against me; the evil she had done since my arrival had been done only in order to have me there with her alone. She loves me . . . She won’t hurt me . . . I kept repeating the words to myself.

  Yet she had killed Colin. And she had loved him.

  But, I reminded myself, she had killed him when he had been packing up to leave—to leave her forever; when she no longer had any hope that he would stay. She had waited until that last possible moment and then, when all hope had gone, she had killed him, killed him rather than let him go. He had tried to make his escape, but he had made the mistake of leaving it too late. He had run outside but she had been with him and she had taken control of the car and slammed it into the beech-tree. No—his mistake wasn’t that he had left it too late, that he had stayed too long; his mistake was that he had come back. And she knew why he had come back. After all, she could hear, she could see.

  Come in, the open door was saying. Come in . . . Oh, yes, she could hear, she could see all right. She knew why Rogers had gone in there. She had been threatened. And she would know that the threat had really come from me . . .

  The door opened a fraction wider.

  Come in . . . come in . . .

  Perhaps she wanted me there just to kill me. As she had killed Colin . . .

  Another two inches the door swung back. The gap was widen­ing, widening . . .

  Come in . . . Please come in . . .

  And then I realised that if she wanted only to kill me she could find some way of doing it now, out here . . . She didn’t have to get me inside the house to do it. No, she didn’t want to kill me.

  Come in . . . come in . . .

  She just wanted me in there.

  I stepped forward and passed through the wide-open doorway.

  I could feel her watching me as I went through into the living-­room. The ticking of the clock was deafening in the silence, and although there were no roses there the scent of them was all around me, thick and heady.

  I hurried to Rogers’ side, my eyes taking in the chaos that had resulted from whatever confrontation had taken place there. A confrontation that Rogers, poor novice that he was, had so completely lost; he hadn’t been as prepared as he’d thought, in spite of his assertions.

  I knelt beside him. He looked as if he’d been struck. There was a mark, a great livid bruise right in the centre of his forehead. The blow had felled him and he had fallen back against the wall. A small table had been toppled and now lay on its side. Pink and blue cornflowers lay in a wet patch of carpet amongst the bits of a shattered china vase. The white knight on his charger lay unbroken. Beside Margaret Lane’s sad sampler the heavy antique sword lay where Rogers’ powerful body had knocked it from its fastenings.

  But he was alive.

  I spoke his name. He didn’t answer or open his eyes, but gave a slight groan, his head moving, leaving on the wall a faint smear of blood. Oh, Christ, don’t let him die, don’t let him die . . .

  I put my hands under his arms and tried to lift him, but it was impossible. He was out completely cold, a dead weight. I must phone Reese, get him to come round . . . I took a cushion from the sofa and put it behind Rogers’ head in an effort to make him a little less uncomfortable. The sword was jammed awkwardly underneath his sprawled body and I eased him up a fraction in order to draw it out. As I straightened up I saw his briefcase lying there; saw the crucifix—he hadn’t even had a chance to get it out; I saw the little vial of holy water.

  And as I looked at it I saw it crushed.

  It appeared to be trodden upon by an unseen foot. One moment it lay whole and perfect and the next moment it was just a little oblong shape of crushed glass with the water staining the carpet.

  “Helen . . .” I whispered it.

  I felt her hand on my shoulder.

  I shuddered. My heart thudded and lurched. I stood up, brushing frantically at the unseen touch. I felt her hand move from my shoulder to my throat, and I thought, She could kill me . . . She could kill me for trying to destroy her. Fingers fluttered on my neck for a moment, then settled again, tighter, tighter. I felt thumbs digging in, pressing, pressing hard, harder, felt the shape of her hands as they encircled my throat. She was strangling me.

  I choked, gasped, struggling for breath, trying to move out of her grasp, desperately jerking my head from side to side. But she held on. I was getting no air at all. Black and blood-red shapes swarmed before my staring eyes and I sank to my knees on the carpet amongst the broken china and the cornflowers.

  And still her iron grip was there. My head, my lungs felt as if they would burst; I felt I would never breathe again.

  And then, just as I was sure I was about to die, all at once the pressure eased and her fingers loosed their grip. Her hands released me, moving from me with a gentle, caressing brush of my cheek. I knelt there on the floor with my head hanging, sucking gulps of air down into my lungs.
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br />   For a time I didn’t move. When my thoughts were able to get past the sheer relief at being alive, of the burning in my throat and the hammering in my head I asked myself why she had stopped. And I realised that she’d had no intention of killing me. She hadn’t meant to kill me at all. She had been punishing me for trying to harm her. And warning me also? Warning me not to try to leave her? Yes, perhaps. If so it was a warning I must heed. Colin had tried to leave her, and he had died. I would have to be cleverer than Colin, and cleverer than she.

  I spoke to her, directly.

  “Are you there . . . ?” I knew she was. I could sense her, still so close to me, feel her presence, so real.

  “Are you there . . . ?”

  I waited for her answer. When it came it was a strangely gentle sound; just one little whispered word.

  “Always.”

  Yes, always. True.

  “Don’t you realise,” I said, “I’m here. I’m back.”

  “Yes.”

  Yes. She could hear me all right; she could see me. But she didn’t know what was going on in my head. She couldn’t read my mind.

  “I shall stay here,” I said.

  Silence.

  “Well,” I went on, as persuasively as I could sound, “this is my home. It’s my home.”

  Then her voice. Nearer. “Yes. Yes . . .”

  And suddenly her arms encircled me, wrapping me like wings, holding me close, and the fear I felt welled up so that I cried out, “No! Oh, God, No!” and lifted my hands in an attempt to free myself from her embrace. She gave a little cry and her arms fell away from me.

  I found I was still holding the sword. Was that what had made her cry out? I was holding the sword by its dull-edged blade, hilt uppermost, so that a cross was formed . . .

  I held it higher . . .

  “Keep away from me,” I said. “Stay away.”

  I thought of the film I had seen where the man had held aloft a crucifix. Could it be that such a symbol really might combat evil? Had this symbol of the cross I now held had an effect upon her? Was she so evil that the goodness it symbolised could cause her fear?—or even pain? I held the cross higher still.