Sweetheart, Sweetheart

by Bernard Taylor

  I came out under the arch. Hesitating for a moment alongside the sunken garden I looked up at the steep pitch of the roof. Yes, Bronwen had—where Helen was concerned—succeeded in her efforts. Perhaps at the end it hadn’t been so difficult. Helen had suffered so much already at Bronwen’s hands. I recalled what Reese had said about having to treat Helen for various injuries she had sustained in her work. I couldn’t think that Helen was responsible for those injuries; it had to have been Bronwen . . . And then there had been Helen’s sleepless nights, her self-­portraits mutilated—and her photographs treated in the same way. But she had not seen them; Colin had hidden them away. Why? Because he hadn’t wanted her to see them? Or perhaps he had thought that Helen herself had done the damage. In which case he must surely have thought she was going mad. Yes, Helen had suffered; and in ways I would never know about. How long, I wondered, had he known that Bronwen was responsible? On that last night, though—the last night of Helen’s life—he must have known about her. And probably poor Helen was half-mad by then. Yes. And Colin, beside himself with worry, had asked Elizabeth Barton to come from London. At the last moment he had gone for help. And that was the night it had all ended for Helen. Waiting her chance Bronwen had somehow drawn her out of the house with the belief that the kitten was stuck on the roof. Helen, crazed, had believed it. And climbing up to it she had fallen. Or maybe—probably—she’d been pushed. Of course; she’d been pushed just as certainly as Bronwen had driven Colin’s­ car into the beech tree, as certainly as she had torn out his heart. Yes, Bronwen had hurled Helen down to her death on the flower-covered rocks . . .

  I turned away, sickened again by the image that sprang into my mind, and moved towards the kitchen door. I must get our luggage and put it into the car. Get away from here. Away from such sad, grotesque images; all those memories of things that showed so clearly the evil purpose that had been in Bronwen’s heart. I turned the handle of the door, opened it.

  The kitchen was different.

  It didn’t look any different, but it was. It was the atmosphere there. It was the welcome that reached out to me; a welcome touched with the scent of roses.

  She was still there.

  I thought I had banished her. But I hadn’t. But there—I had been trying to banish the spirit of Helen . . .

  Whatever . . . Bronwen was still there. She had not gone. She had never gone. She had merely withdrawn, voluntarily—in order to put me at my ease, to make me feel safe. And now she knew that I knew . . . that I knew the truth . . .

  The wind had sprung up again and the towel in my hand flapped and billowed out. I stood there with my other hand on the door-handle.

  Leave your luggage, a voice in my head was telling me. Leave it. Don’t go back inside. Go away from the house now, forever, but don’t let her know that you are going forever . . .

  Yes, yes, I would leave everything there. Don’t say a word to anyone. Just leave. Say nothing to Jean Timpson, anyone. Just leave. Bronwen couldn’t read my mind. She could hear, she could see, yes, but she couldn’t read my mind . . .

  I did go inside. I went into the kitchen and hung the towel on the rail. Move calmly, I told myself. No panic . . .

  Jean Timpson came in from the dining-room where I could see she had laid out the things for afternoon tea.

  “I made a cake,” she said, and I smiled at her and said I could smell it, that it smelled delicious. I couldn’t smell any cake; I could only smell the scent of roses. The scent was growing stronger. I said casually:

  “I’ll just go down and collect She­lagh from the village . . .” Act naturally. Don’t show how afraid you are . . .Without any show of hurrying I moved back to the door. “See you in a minute,” I said as I went outside.

  I walked steadily to the car, got in and drove away down the hill. I knew what we had to do. I had to drive with She­lagh straight back to London. We wouldn’t stop at the house or anything. Our luggage could stay. Yes. Our passports were safe at the hotel, as were our tickets and our overnight cases. And I had money. She­lagh might fret that she had lost a few clothes—but she would keep her life and I would keep my freedom, my sanity . . .

  I wouldn’t even tell her we were going. Not at once. I would lie to her so that she would accept the need for our driving off somewhere else. Only when we were safely out of Bronwen’s way would I, perhaps, tell her the truth. Anyway, I’d face that problem when it arose.

  I pulled up the car outside Pitkin’s shop and ran inside. He got up from his old desk and came towards me.

  “Where’s my wife?” I asked, looking around.

  He spread his hands in a gesture of not knowing. “She wouldn’t wait any longer. She left.”

  “Did she walk? She couldn’t have done; I didn’t pass her on my way here.”

  “No, Doctor Reese came by. He offered to give her a lift. He said he had to call in at his home first, though.” He smiled. “She’s only just gone. You’ll probably catch her up . . .”

  I turned and dashed outside.

  33

  Reese’s wife answered the door frowning at my insistent ringing. Her expression cleared when she saw my face, the panic I know I showed there. The doctor had just left, she told me; he’d only stopped to pick up his bag.

  “And my wife was with him——?”

  “Yes. He was going to drop her off at your house.” A piece of newspaper blew against her ankles and she picked it off, raising her voice slightly against the increasing noise of the wind. “Is there anything wrong?”

  “No, no, it’s all right, thank you.”

  I left her standing watching me as I ran back to the car.

  I drove out of the village with little regard for other motorists or the narrowness of the streets. The wind was really getting up now and the tops of the trees were bending, dipping under the force of the gale. As I turned the car onto Gerrard’s Hill the wind buffeted it so that I had to grip hard on the steering wheel.

  But I got to the cottage in time. I made it in time. As I rounded the bend I saw Reese’s car standing at the cottage gate, and there was She­lagh, next to the car, leaning in through the window. I watched as she straightened up; as Reese’s car began to move forward; as She­lagh turned towards the house. I pressed harder on the accelerator and gave a blast on the horn.

  With one hand on the gate she looked around. I saw the way the wind whipped up her hair, blowing it across her face. Up ahead Reese’s car came to a halt again. I drove on and pulled up just beyond the entrance to the driveway. I wound down the window, put my head out and yelled for She­lagh to come and get in. I had to shout otherwise I wouldn’t have been heard over the noise of the wind. She stayed by the gate, waiting for me to get out. I beckoned to her, leaned over and swung open the door on the passenger’s side, and the wind promptly took it and slammed it shut again. Leaves and bits of twigs, torn from the surrounding trees and hedges, were hurling past like snowflakes in a snow storm. She­lagh put up a hand, holding the hair out of her eyes and, pressing against the wind, came towards me. She looked puzzled and none too happy. As she came closer I saw her lips moving as she spoke. But I couldn’t hear her words.

  “What did you say?” I yelled.

  She yelled back. “I want to know what’s happening. You’ve got a nerve . . .” The wind was so strong I could barely hear her. I strained my ears to catch her words as she went on: “You left me standing in that shop like a lemon, and now you come blasting your horn at me. What’s happening?”

  I should have been ready with some story to appease her. Her and Bronwen. Bronwen most of all, right now. But I wasn’t.

  “I’ve got to go back down to the village,” I yelled. It was the best I could think of.

  “Well? Have you got to have me with you?” She hadn’t got over being left stranded.

  “ . . . Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “. . . You’ll see.”

  “Oh, come on now.” She was in no mood for games.

  “P
lease,” I shouted, trying to calm myself inside; the wind wasn’t helping, “—please, do as I ask.”

  “I don’t get it . . .” She just stood there next to the car door—which I was fighting to keep from swinging shut. I saw that Reese had got out of his car and was walking towards us. And the last thing I wanted was to get tied up in a conversation with him. I had to get She­lagh into the car and take off. I had to. I forced a smile at her.

  “I’m sorry, darling—for leaving you like that.” Because of the wind I almost had to deliver each word separately. “Something came up. I’ll explain later.” I patted the seat beside me. “Come on. Get in, please . . .”

  As she still hesitated a shower of broken twigs hurled scattering over the car roof. She moved then, and got in. “Okay,” she said, “where are we going? And what’s it all about?”

  I didn’t answer. As she slammed the door Reese came to my window. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear. He tapped on the glass, smiling. I shook my head, turned away from him, released the handbrake and drove forward a couple of yards. As I glanced into the rear-view mirror I saw the taken aback expression on his face. I didn’t dwell on it. I began to reverse into the driveway. She­lagh said, looking at the doctor in surprise and then at me:

  “David, what are you thinking of? Are you blind? Couldn’t you see Doctor Reese was trying to talk to you?”

  I ignored her too. I pulled up sharply, changed to first gear and pressed the accelerator. At that moment I didn’t care what Reese thought of my rudeness; I didn’t care what She­lagh thought of it either. I just wanted to get us away. I wrenched the wheel round to take the corner back onto Gerrard’s Hill . . . and at that moment the cat ran out.

  Girlie leapt from among the writhing branches of the hedge right into the path of the car. She­lagh screamed and I jammed on my brakes. The engine stalled. As I struggled, all thumbs, to restart it, she threw open the door and scrambled out. I leaned sideways, reaching to stop her, but my hand clutched only the air. I flung my own door open and leapt out into the wind, which was so strong that I was momentarily knocked off balance and went sprawling across the bonnet.

  The cat wasn’t dead. As She­lagh moved towards it I saw it get up. Dragging its broken right hind leg, it crawled, mewing piteously, through the fence and into the front garden. She­lagh stopped, standing like a statue, her hands up to her face, staring in shock. Only her hair moved, and her skirt as it flapped against her. Beyond her I saw Jean Timpson appear from the house. She stood on the path, one arm raised, shielding herself from the wind.

  She­lagh was crying as her gaze followed the agonising progress of the injured cat. I saw the tears streaming from her eyes, drying on her cheeks. I just caught her words as she cried out hysterically: “Do something! Oh, David, for God’s sake, do something!”

  I didn’t do anything. I just stood there. The little cat appeared in my view again. I saw how her mouth opened and closed with her unheard cries of pain as she slithered through the shrubbery, through the bent and broken poppy stems and onto the pathway. As She­lagh took a sudden step to go after her I reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Stay here! Stay here!”

  She tried to shake me off. “David! Let me go!” But I held on tighter and she whirled to face me, her tearful eyes showing horror and disbelief at my callous behaviour. I hardened myself not to give in to her. I held her tighter, leaning to shout into her ear above the howling wind, “Please—get in the car,” watching while the kitten crawled by Jean Timpson’s feet and into the kitchen. Reese, fighting the gale, came up to us and asked what had happened. “Nothing,” I told him, all the time trying to urge She­lagh to get back in the car. She­lagh cried out to him: “It’s the kitten. It’s hurt.” And then to me. “Help it, God damn you. Do something!”

  Reese said, “You can’t just leave the poor creature if——” and I flung at him, cutting in: “Okay, you’re a doctor, you do something,” and held on to She­lagh while she twisted in my grasp. Raising her fists she beat on my upper arms, my chest, and then with one final, violent movement she was free and running towards the house.

  As she got to the door I saw Jean Timpson step into her path, putting up her hands, but She­lagh dodged them, her own arms sweeping, warding off all attempts to hold her. The next instant she had run inside. As I hurried after her Jean Timpson reached out and grabbed my jacket.

  “Please—Mr. David . . . don’t go in there.”

  “I must.”

  “Don’t. She’s in there.”

  “ . . . She?”

  “The other one.”

  I stared at her as I shook off her hand.

  “You know?”

  “For a long time . . .”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Who would have believed me? They would have said I—I was mad.”

  Reese had come up behind us. I heard his voice asking, “What’s happening? What the hell’s going on?” I didn’t answer. Jean Timpson’s hand came again to restrain me but I brushed it aside. “Let me get by, Jean . . .”

  She shook her head. “Let me go in.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. She’s got nothing against me. If she’d ever wanted to hurt me she could have done it long before this time.”

  “You were never a threat to her,” I said. “You never got in the way of what she wanted.”

  At my words she only moved closer into the doorway. “Let me go in,” she pleaded. “You mustn’t. If you do you—you might never get out again.” As close as we stood I had to strain to hear her. The wind just snatched up her words, ripping them away, flinging them into the eye of the gale. Now she turned from me and yelled into the kitchen:

  “I’m coming in. I’m coming in to get her. You must—you must let her go.”

  She turned back to face me, framed in the doorway, her hair flying. Her pink ribbon had come adrift and even as I watched it blew straight out like a streamer and was torn free, to go twisting and turning away with the leaves, grasses and flowers that went whirling by. Against her legs the wind whipped her skirt, showing the shape of them. Over on the edge of the orchard one of the laden apple-trees gave up the struggle and a heavy branch fell, split cleanly from the trunk. On the garage roof one of Timpson’s new slates shifted on the pile and crashed down onto the concrete. Others followed it. One of them I saw lifted up as easily as if it were no lighter than a piece of card. In a shower of leaves and spinning gravel it came whirling, whistling by and I watched it rise up, high on the crest of the gale, saw it tossed into the air, higher, higher, then saw it turn, slowly, over and over, and then faster, faster, faster, till its shape was no longer discernible. Up it went, spinning like a disc, skimming over our heads and away, out of sight.

  Jean Timpson glanced back into the house, at the same time warding off my hands as I tried to move by her. Then she turned back, one last time, to face me again.

  “Please, Mr. David . . . I shall be all right.” She gave me a brave little smile, direct into my eyes. “Really I will.”

  And as she spoke the last word the whirling, spinning blur of grey came screaming, louder than the wind, over the rooftop.

  Instinctively I ducked, seeing in the same moment how Jean Timpson raised her hand to protect herself, how she whirled around, turning to face away from the danger. The little cry of fear she gave was cut off as the hard edge of the slate struck the back of her skull, splitting it as a knife will split an apple.

  37

  Blood spurted as she jack-knifed, limbs jerking like a marionette’s. Her back arched and her arms flung out sideways, stiff fingers striking the edge of the doorway. Just one more sound she made, short, guttural. For a split second she seemed to hang there, a grotesque, uncoordinated doll, and then she pitched forward, through the doorway onto the kitchen floor.

  The wind had taken the spurt of her blood and sent it in a spray that speckled the wall and drenched Reese’s jacket. I could feel it too on my raised h
ands, taste it on my mouth . . .

  I left her in a widening pool of blood while Reese bent over her and tried, hopelessly, to help her. He couldn’t help her. No one could do anything for her, that much was clear. She was quite dead. Poor Jean; she had tried so hard to keep me out, but there I was after all, inside the house.

  I ran through the dining-room, to the living-room and then back to the hall. Even here, inside, the sound of the wind was deafening. And now there was rain, too, and it dashed itself against the panes so hard that I felt they’d never withstand the onslaught. As I went up the stairs I could sense Bronwen’s presence more strongly than ever before. Looking in on Colin and Helen’s room I saw white roses on the pillows. Oh, yes, Bronwen was there all right. She had never gone. I was a fool to have thought I could banish her so easily; if I had banished a ghost then it certainly hadn’t been hers. No, she had just used her guile to keep me here. Well, I was here, but she wouldn’t keep me. And she wouldn’t keep She­lagh, either.

  “She­lagh . . . !”

  I kept calling her name as I ran from one room to another. No sign of her anywhere, and I turned and hurried downstairs again, all the time breathing in the rose scent and feeling that I might choke on my fear.

  As I got to the foot of the stairs Reese came into the hall, a terrible spectacle in his blood-reddened clothes. He looked dazed and totally unaware of what was happening.

  “I tried to phone for an ambulance,” he said, “but your phone’s out of order . . .”

  “Help me find She­lagh!” I shouted at him. “Help me!” And then, immediately following my words I heard, faintly in the storm’s sudden lull, She­lagh’s voice coming from beyond the closed cellar door.

  I turned the handle of the door but I couldn’t open it. It wasn’t locked; it was just stuck. Bronwen again. I called out to She­lagh, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out,” trying to force calm into my words, then turned and dashed away, out of the house and into the renewed howling power of the driving wind and rain. Although it was still afternoon the sky was dark with heavy clouds that raced by, their shapes twisting, writhing, changing by the moment. I headed for the toolshed, pressing myself against the wind, forcing my way through, while the rain hit my skin like needles. I saw that one of the elms had fallen, crashing through the flimsy orchard fence, and now lay partly across the lawn, partly among the broken fruit-trees. I was reminded again of that other night of storm, when Effie had stood under her parasol, pathetically seeking shelter while she waited for Handyman. But Handyman had never turned up and Effie, going to look for him, had met Bronwen. Bronwen who, hours later, had been struck down by the storm as if by some divine judgement. But by that time it had been too late; Effie and Handyman were beyond saving.