September

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “You’ll be all right, now?” The man leached over to open Henry’s door.

  “Yes, of course. Thank you very much indeed. You’ve been very kind.”

  “You mind yourself, now.”

  “I will.” He clambered down the great height to the road. “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, sonny.”

  The door slammed shut. The massive vehicle went on its way, and Henry stood and watched it go, its red taillight winking, like a friendly eye. The sound of the engine faded into the darkness, and after it was gone, everything seemed very quiet.

  He started off again, walking down the middle of the deserted street. He felt extremely tired, but that didn’t matter, because he was almost there. He knew exactly where he was going and what he was going to do, because he had laid his secret plans with the greatest possible thought and care. He’d mulled over every eventuality, and left nothing to chance. He was not going to Balnaid, nor Pennyburn, but to Edie’s. He was not going to Balnaid because there would be nobody there. His mother his father, Alexa and her friend were all at Croy, having dinner with the Balmerinos before going to Mrs Steynton’s party. And he was not going to Pennyburn because Vi was at Croy too. And even if they had all been at home, he would still have made for Edie’s cottage because Edie would be there.

  Without Lottie. Horrible Lottie was back in hospital. The news had been relayed to Henry by Mr Henderson, and the relief of knowing that Edie was safely on her own again had filled Henry with courage and finally precipitated his illegal flight. It made all the difference, knowing that he had somewhere safe to go. Edie would take him in her arms, ask no questions, make him hot cocoa. Edie would listen to him. She would understand. She would be on his side. And with Edie on his side, surely everybody else would take notice of what she had to say and would not be angry with him.

  The lights still burned in Mrs Ishak’s supermarket, but he kept to the far side of the road, so that Mrs Ishak, by chance, would not see him as he passed by. The rest of the street was dark, lit only by the curtained windows of the wayside houses. From behind these windows Henry could hear muffled voices of music from people’s television sets. Edie would be sitting in her armchair, watching television, busy with her knitting.

  He came to her little cottage with its thatch, crouched down between its neighbours. The window of her sitting room was dark, which meant she wasn’t watching television. But from her bedroom window, light streamed brightly out, and it seemed that she had forgotten to draw her curtains.

  She had other curtains, lace ones, for privacy, but it was perfectly possible to see through these. Henry went close to the window and peered inside, cupping his hands to the sides of his face as he had seen grown-ups do. The lace curtains veiled the interior a bit, but he saw Edie at once. She was standing at her dressing-table, with her back to him. She was wearing her new lilac cardigan and looked as though she was putting powder on her face. Perhaps she was going out. Dressed in her best lilac cardigan…

  He balled his fist and rapped on the glass to catch her attention. She turned from the mirror with a start and came towards him. The overhead light shone down on her face, and his heart leapt in a spasm of horror, because something dreadful had happened to her. She had got a different face, with staring black eyes and a mouth red with lipstick, all smeared as though it were blood. And her hair was wrong, and her cheeks pale as paper…

  It was Lottie.

  Those staring eyes. A revulsion, stronger than fear, jerked him away from the window. He backed off across the street, out of the patch of yellow light that lay across the wet pavement. Every exhausted limb in his body was shaking, and his heart thumped against his chest as though it were trying to fight its way out. Petrified with terror, he thought he would probably never be able to move again. The terror was for himself, but mostly it was for Edie.

  Lottie had done something to her. His very worst nightmare was true, was happening. Somehow, Lottie had come creeping secretly back to Strathcroy and burst in on Edie when Edie wasn’t looking. Somewhere in the cottage Edie lay. On the kitchen floor perhaps, with a meat chopper in the back of her neck and blood all over the place.

  He opened his mouth to scream for help, but the only sound that emerged was a trembling, faint whisper.

  And now Lottie was there, at the window, raising the lace curtain to peer out into the street, her horrible face pressed against the glass. In a moment, she would go to the door, she would be after him.

  He forced his legs to move; backed away up the road, and then turned and ran. It was like running in a dreadful, treacly dream, but this time he knew that he would never wake up. His ears were filled with the thud of his own footsteps and the rasping of his breath. It was difficult to breathe. He tore off the Balaclava helmet and the cold air streamed down on his head and cheeks. His brain cleared, and ahead, he saw his refuge. The bright windows of Mrs Ishak’s shop, stacked with the usual colourful display of soap powders and cereal packets and cut-price bargains.

  He ran to Mrs Ishak.

  Mrs Ishak’s long day was winding itself down. Her husband, having emptied the till of a day’s takings, had disappeared into the stockroom, where each evening he totted up all the cash, and then locked it away in his safe. Mrs Ishak had been around the shelves, replacing tins and goods, and filling up the gaps left by the day’s customers. She was now busy with her broom, sweeping the floor.

  When the door burst open so suddenly and with such force, she was a little startled. She looked up from her sweeping, her brows raised over her kohl-rimmed eyes, and was even more startled when she saw who it was.

  “Henree.”

  He looked terrible, wearing a mud-stained tweed coat sizes too big for him, and with his socks falling down and his shoes covered with dirt. But Mrs Ishak was less concerned by his clothes than the state of Henry himself. Gasping for breath, ashen-white, he stood there for a second, before slamming the door shut and setting his back against it.

  “Henree.” Mrs Ishak laid down her broom. “What has happened?” But he had no breath for words. “Why are you not at school?”

  His mouth worked. “Edie’s dead.” She could scarcely hear him. And then again, only this time he shouted it at her, “Edie’s dead.”

  “But…”

  Henry burst into tears. Mrs Ishak held out her arms and Henry fled into them. She knelt to his height, holding him close to her silken breast, her hand cupped around the back of his head. “No,” she murmured. “No. It is not true.” And when he went on crying, hysterically asserting that it was, she tried to soothe him, speaking to him in katchi, that intimate and unwritable dialect that all the Ishak family used when they spoke among themselves. Henry had heard the soft sounds before, when Mrs Ishak comforted Kedejah, or sat her on her knee to pet her. He could not understand a word but he was comforted too, and Mrs Ishak smelled musky and delicious, and her lovely rose-pink tunic was cool against his face.

  And yet he had to make her understand. He pulled away from her embrace and stared into her confused and troubled face.

  “Edie is dead.”

  “No, Henry.”

  “Yes, she is.” He gave her a little thump on her shoulder, maddened that she was being so stupid.

  “Why do you say this?”

  “Lottie’s in her house. She’s killed her. She’s stealing her cardigan.”

  Mrs Ishak stopped looking confused. Her face sharpened. She frowned.

  “Did you see Lottie?”

  “Yes. She’s in Edie’s bedroom, and…”

  Mrs Ishak got to her feet. “Shamsh!” she called to her husband, and her voice was strong and urgent.

  “What is it?”

  “Come quickly.” He appeared. Mrs Ishak, in a long stream of katchi, gave him instructions. He asked questions; she answered them. He went back to his stockroom, and Henry heard the sound as he dialled a number on his telephone.

  Mrs Ishak fetched a chair and made Henry sit on it. She knelt beside him and held his hands.


  She said, “Henree, I do not know what you are doing here but you must listen to me. Mr Ishak is telephoning the police now. They will come in a patrol car and fetch Lottie and take her back to hospital. They have been warned that she left the hospital without permission, and have been told to watch out for her. Now, do you understand that?”

  “Yes, but Edie…”

  With her gentle fingers, Mrs Ishak wiped away the tears that dribbled down Henry’s cheeks. With the end of her rose-pink chiffon scarf, which she wore draped around her shining black hair, she dabbed at his snivelling nose.

  She told him, “Edie is at Balnaid. She is staying there for the night. She is safe.”

  Henry stared in silence at Mrs Ishak, terrified that she was not telling him the truth.

  “How do you know?” he asked her at last.

  “Because on her way there, she dropped in to see me, to buy an evening newspaper. She told me that your granny, Mrs Aird, had told her about Lottie, and also that Mrs Aird did not want her to stay alone in her own cottage.”

  “Vi was frightened of Lottie, too?”

  “Not frightened. Mrs Aird would not be frightened, I think. But concerned for your dear Edie. So you see, it is all right. You are safe.”

  From the back of the shop, they could hear Mr Ishak speaking on the telephone. Henry turned his head to listen, but could not catch the words. Then Mr Ishak stopped speaking and rang off. Henry waited. Mr Ishak came through the door.

  “All right?” asked Mrs Ishak.

  “Yes. I have spoken to the police. They will send a patrol car. It should be in the village in about five minutes.”

  “Do they know where to go?”

  “Yes. They know.” He looked at Henry, and smiled reassuringly. “Poor boy. You have had a bad fright. But it is over now.”

  They were being very kind. Mrs Ishak still knelt, holding Henry’s hands, and he had stopped shaking. After a bit, he asked, “Can I ring Edie up?”

  “No. It is not possible to do that because your telephone at Balnaid is out of order. Edie reported it to Faults before she left her home, but they said that they could not attend to the matter before tomorrow morning. But we will wait a little, and I will make you a hot drink, and then I will walk with you to Balnaid and you will be with your Edie.”

  It was only then that Henry was truly convinced that Edie was not dead. She was at Balnaid, waiting for him, and the knowledge that soon he would be with her was almost more than he could bear. He felt his mouth trembling like a baby’s, and the tears filling his eyes, but he was too tired to do anything about them. Mrs Ishak said his name and once more gathered him into her silk and scented embrace and he wept for a long time.

  Finally, it was all over, except for a few troublesome sobs. Mr Ishak brought him a mug of hot chocolate, very sweet and brown and bubbly, and Mrs Ishak made him a sandwich with jam in the middle.

  “Tell me,” said Mrs Ishak, when Henry was feeling much stronger and more composed, “because you still have not answered my first question. Why are you here and not at school?”

  Henry, with his fingers locked around the hot mug, gazed into her dark and liquid eyes.

  “I didn’t like it,” he told her. “I ran away. I’ve come home.”

  The clock on the mantelpiece stood at twenty to nine as Edmund walked into the drawing room at Croy. He had expected to find it filled with people, but instead discovered Archie and an unknown man, whom, by the simple process of elimination, he assumed to be the Sad American, Conrad Tucker, and the root-cause of Edmund’s immediate disagreement with Virginia.

  Both men were resplendent in their evening gear, Archie looking better than Edmund had seen him look in years. They sat by the fire, companionably, glasses in their hands. Conrad Tucker occupied an armchair, and Archie perched, with his back to the fire, on the club fender. As the door opened, they stopped talking, looked up, saw Edmund, and got to their feet.

  “Edmund.”

  “We’re late, I’m sorry. We’ve had dramas.”

  “As you can see, not late at all. Nobody else, yet, has appeared. Where’s Virginia?”

  “Gone upstairs to shed her coat. And Alexa and Noel will be here in a moment. At the last minute Alexa decided to wash her hair, and she was still drying it when we left. God knows why she didn’t think of doing it before.”

  “They never do,” said Archie bleakly, speaking from years of experience. “Edmund, you’ve not met Conrad Tucker.”

  “No, I don’t think I have. How do you do.”

  They shook hands. The American was as tall as Edmund, and heftily built. His eyes, behind the heavy horn-rims, met Edmund’s in a steady gaze, and Edmund found himself torn by an uncharacteristic uncertainty.

  For, deep within him, concealed by a civilised veneer of good manners, burned a smouldering rage and resentment against this man, this American, who appeared to have taken over while Edmund’s back was turned, rekindled Virginia’s remembered youth, and was now calmly planning to fly back to the States with her — Edmund’s wife — in tow. Smiling politely into Conrad Tucker’s open face, Edmund toyed with the lovely idea of balling his fist and smashing it into that craggy and suntanned nose. Imagining the consequent mayhem, the blood and the bruising, filled him with shameful relish.

  And yet on the other hand he knew that, under different circumstances, this was the sort of person that it would be perfectly possible to like instantly.

  Conrad Tucker’s friendly expression mirrored Edmund’s own. “How very nice to meet you.” Damn his eyes.

  Archie was headed for the tray of bottles.

  “Edmund. A small whisky?”

  “Thank you. I could do with one.”

  His host reached for the Famous Grouse. “When did you get back from New York?”

  “About five-thirty.”

  Conrad asked, “Did you have a good trip?”

  “More or less. A bit of troubleshooting, a few well-chosen words. I believe you’re an old friend of my wife’s?”

  If he had hoped to throw the other man off-balance, he did not succeed. Conrad Tucker gave nothing away, showed no discomfiture.

  “That’s right. We were dancing partners in our long-ago and misspent youth.”

  “She tells me you’re travelling back to the States together.”

  Still no reaction. If the American guessed that he was being needled, he betrayed no sign. “She got a seat on that plane?” was all that he said.

  “Apparently so.”

  “I hadn’t heard. But that’ll be great. It’s a long trip on your own. I’ll be going to the city straight from Kennedy, but I can see her through immigration and baggage claim, and then be certain that she has transportation to Leesport.”

  “That’s more than kind of you.”

  Archie handed Edmund his drink. “Conrad, I didn’t know you’d planned all this. I didn’t even know Virginia was thinking of going to the States…”

  “She’s going to visit her grandparents.”

  “And when are you off?”

  “I’m staying here until Sunday, if that's all right by you, and then flying out of Heathrow on Thursday. I need a day or two in London to see to some business.”

  “How long have you been in this country?” Edmund asked him.

  “A couple of months.”

  “I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit.”

  “Thank you. I’ve had a fine time.”

  “I’m glad.” Edmund raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  At this point they were interrupted by the appearance of Jeff Howland who, having finally solved the problem of the bow-tie, had completed his dressing and come downstairs. He obviously felt ill at ease and self-conscious in his unaccustomed gear, and his face wore a faintly abashed expression as he walked into the room, but indeed he looked more than presentable in the outfit that he and Lucilla had gleaned from Edmund’s wardrobe. Edmund was amused to see that Jeff had picked out a cream hopsack jacket, purchased in a moment of crisi
s in Hong Kong. It had proved to be a mistaken buy, for Edmund had worn it only once.

  “Jeff.”

  The young man craned his neck and ran a finger around the restricting collar of the starched evening shirt. He said, “I’m not used to this sort of thing. I feel a real berk.”

  “You look splendid. Come and have a drink. We’re on to the whisky before the women turn up and demand champagne.”

  Jeff relaxed a little. He was always happier in purely masculine company. “There wouldn’t be a can of Foster’s?”

  “There most certainly would. On the tray. Help yourself.”

  Jeff relaxed a bit more, reached for the can, poured the long glass. He said to Edmund, “It was good of you to kit me out. I’m grateful.”

  “A pleasure. The jacket is perfect. Dressy, but with just the right touch of outback informality.”

  “That’s what Lucilla said.”

  “She was quite right. And you look a great deal better in it than I did. Wearing it, I resembled an elderly barman…the useless variety that doesn’t even know how to fix a dry martini.”

  Jeff smiled, took a heartening swallow, and then looked about him. “Where are all the girls?”

  “Good question,” said Archie. “God knows.” He had settled himself once more on the fender, seeing no reason to stand about for a moment longer than he had to. “Buttoning themselves into their evening gowns, I suppose. Lucilla was searching for underclothes, Pandora decided to go to bed, and Isobel’s in a state of panic about her evening shoes.” He turned to Edmund. “But you said that you had dramas. What’s been happening at Balnaid?”

  Edmund told him.

  “Our phone’s on the blink, which is one thing. We can make calls, but nobody can get through to us. However, it’s been reported, and some guy’s coming to see to it in the morning. But that’s the least of our worries. Edie turned up out of the blue, with her nightie in a bag, and the news that Lottie Carstairs is on the loose again. She walked out of the Relkirk Royal and hasn’t been seen since.”

  Archie shook his head in exasperation. “That bloody woman is more trouble than a bitch on heat. When did this happen?”