Laura Possessed

by Anthea Fraser

  ‘All right?’ Caroline asked, feeling her involuntary jerk. Her breath was shallow and uneven and she had none to spare for a reply. She nodded and went on up the stairs, Caroline’s arm supporting her.

  The bedroom into which they went was bright and fresh with a pretty floral paper and pale blue carpet. A gas-fire boosted the heat from the radiator which ran under the window, and Laura exclaimed with pleasure. Pushing aside her uneasiness, she moved across to the window and leant for a moment on the sill looking out across the garden.

  ‘What strange, twisted trees!’ she commented. ‘I bet the boys have a marvellous time climbing them!’

  ‘Trees?’ Caroline paused in the act of turning down the counterpane. ‘What trees?’

  ‘Those, at the bottom of the garden.’ Laura turned back to the window and stiffened unbelievingly. Beyond the lawn and flower beds was a neat patch of soil obviously destined later in the year to supply the vegetables for the house. ‘But—I’m sure I saw—’

  ‘You mean the pear and the plum, against the wall?’

  ‘No, I—they were down at the bottom—’

  ‘Possibly in the first quick glance your mind transposed them. I’ve often done that myself when I’m tired. Come on now, slip off your dress and get under the covers. Shall I help you?’

  ‘No, I can manage, thank you. And, Caroline—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I do appreciate it, you and Edward having me here.’

  ‘It’s the least we could do,’ Caroline said briskly. ‘Lie down now and rest and I’ll give you a call half an hour before dinner. Sleep well.’ She left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Laura stood in the middle of the floor and drew a deep, quivering breath. In spite of what Caroline had said about transposing the image of the fruit trees, she was not convinced. It was not fruit trees she had seen down there against the far wall of the garden but dark, oddly twisted trees huddled close together like a crowd of small, crippled old men. She shuddered and, unbuttoning her dress, stepped out of it and laid it over the chair, but instead of getting straight into bed, she crouched down on the rug by the gas-fire, welcoming its warm rays on her thin bare arms. The last hour had been quite traumatic. She tried to fight down the memory of the sensation she had experienced as she entered the house, and yet it was impossible to blot out completely because, to a lesser extent, it was here in the room with her now, an undeniable sense of desperate, hopeless waiting. Once again she thought she caught the flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, again she turned her head sharply, though this time she knew there could be no one there.

  She was not aware how long she stayed crouched on the rug in her petticoat, but at last, unsteadily, she made her way over to the bed and gratefully inched between the warm sheets, drawing them up over her shoulders. She had forgotten to turn off the gas-fire and it popped and hissed gently against the far wall, but she was too warm and drowsy to get out of bed.

  So here she was, at Four Winds. Once again the little tremor ran down her spine as it had each time she heard the name of this house, ever since Edward had bought it months ago. Everything is all right, she told herself confusedly. She was in a warm, comfortable room, surrounded by normal people doing everyday things. If she strained her ears, she could hear Mrs. Baines moving about in the kitchen below. Edward and Caroline would be in the pleasant sitting-room she had just left, and soon nine-year-old Peter would be home from school. How, in the midst of all this happy bustle, could she—and apparently only she—be aware of this strange undercurrent, this pervading sense of tragedy? And whether that tragedy lay in the past or the future, or whether it straddled them both, there was no way of knowing.

  Then, from one instant to the next, she must have slept, for she was in another room that she had never seen before, and there was a man with her, a man who held and kissed her with increasing urgency while she clung to him with eyes open so as to miss no moment of his closeness. He moved his head away slightly to look down at her and every feature of his face imprinted itself on her mind in her frenzied desire to memorize each detail, as though she knew that inevitably they must soon part.

  It was an attractive, though self-indulgent face with heavily lidded eyes of a slaty grey-blue, a broad nose and full, sensual mouth. His chin had a slight cleft in it and his dark hair, shaggy and over-long, fell forward over his broad forehead. Smilingly he endured her intense scrutiny. He lifted a hand and almost reverently touched her face.

  ‘I worship you, Noel,’ he said softly. ‘Do you know that?’

  Slowly, as her eyes strained towards him, his features began to blur and fade and she cried out with a sense of unbearable loss. She could hear her own voice clearly and then, still in the coils of the dream, Caroline’s: ‘Laura! Are you all right?’

  ‘Laura’? The name was frighteningly unfamiliar. Frantically she struggled awake, half of her trying to delve back into the dream, the other half desperately seeking to escape from it.

  Caroline stood by the bed looking down at her. ‘I heard you call out. You must have been dreaming. In any case I was just coming—it’s almost seven. We usually eat at seven-thirty, but there’s time for a bath first if you’d like one. The bathroom’s next door.’

  She switched the light on as she went out. For a long moment Laura lay still. Then, as the trembling abated, she swung her legs to the floor and reached for her dressing-gown.

  CHAPTER TWO

  During the next few days, Laura despairingly tried to stamp down her growing awareness of that strange force which seemed to follow her about the house. Brought up in a rational household, she was convinced that this awareness, obviously peculiar to herself, must be brought about by some malfunction of her brain as a result of the car crash. Far, far better to endure those searing, iron-banded headaches than this delusion. Nor dare she confide her uneasiness to Edward or Caroline, in case they should feel she was not after all well enough to be out of hospital.

  Unfortunately, Caroline’s insistence on plenty of rest meant that she had to spend long hours alone in her bedroom, and after the pleasant normality of lunch, it was with a sense of dread that Laura had to steel herself to go upstairs, knowing that ‘she’ would be waiting. Caroline had brushed aside her timid suggestion that she could rest equally well on the sitting-room sofa by declaring that if she were downstairs, she was sure to be disturbed by the general bustle of the household. Laura found herself wondering a little uncharitably whether part of the reason was that Caroline preferred to have her out of the way for most of the afternoon.

  The dream she had had that first afternoon occupied Laura’s mind continually that week. She recalled it with distaste and embarrassment, and her memory of the man’s face, as clear in her mind as when she had dreamt it, awoke in her a feeling of acute dislike rather than the passion of her dream.

  Over lunch one day, she questioned Caroline about the history of the house, wondering if anything in its past might explain her present discomfort.

  ‘Funnily enough,’ Caroline told her, ‘it used to belong to the family of a man Edward knows. Apparently he spent his childhood here, before and during the war. I don’t know what happened after that. He became a journalist, which is how Edward met him, and travelled freelance all over the world.’

  ‘And presumably while he was away his family moved?’

  ‘I suppose so. But he must feel his roots are here. He came back to this country a few months ago and is now thinking of buying a house in the district.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Some indefinable note in her voice made Laura glance at her, but she went on quickly, ‘I told him he must come to dinner one evening and see Four Winds as it is today.’

  ‘I imagine it’ll be very different from how he knew it.’

  ‘Lord, yes. It had been empty for some time when Edward and I found it—broken panes and flaking brown paint—you know the kind of thing. We had workmen in the house for three solid months—c
entral heating engineers, plumbers, plasterers, electricians—you name them, we had them!’

  None of which, concluded Laura ruefully, threw the least light on what was troubling her.

  She did not really want to go to the cocktail party that Sunday, but Edward would take no refusal.

  ‘I’ll make sure you don’t get too tired and we shan’t stay long, and it will do you good to see some new faces. We can’t have you turning into a recluse! You do seem to have been rather nervous the last few days. A change of scene will make all the difference. Anyway, I want you to meet Clive Sandilands and collect some facts about violence.’

  Laura smiled. ‘You’re determined I should write that book, aren’t you?’

  ‘A book, yes. The choice of subject matter was yours, and I must admit it surprised me rather.’

  ‘It surprised me too,’ Laura said frankly. ‘I hadn’t realized I was sufficiently interested in the subject. I always skip the more lurid descriptions in the papers. Perhaps it stems from my own accident—a personality change!’ She was smiling but watched his face closely to see whether he reacted to the suggestion.

  ‘Jekyll and Hyde? Not quite your thing, sweetie.’

  ‘But could it all have a lasting effect, Edward?’ Laura persisted in a low voice, anxious, now that the subject had been broached, to probe a little deeper.

  ‘The crash? I shouldn’t think so. It would have manifested itself before this, anyway.’

  And with that she had to be content. Perhaps he was right, she thought as she prepared for the party, and all she needed was to be taken out of herself. But as the everyday expression passed through her mind, it jolted to a startled standstill. ‘To be taken out of herself’—what an annihilating thought! She caught up her handbag and went running out of the room and down the stairs to where Edward stood waiting.

  Afterwards, when the choking, dizzy panic had receded slightly, Laura was convinced that she had known as she went into Tom Howard’s house what she would find there, and it was with a sense of blind fatalism that she looked across the room full of people to see the man from her dream standing by the fireplace. It couldn’t be happening, but it was. She was seized with a fit of uncontrollable shaking that was painful in its intensity. He turned his head in their direction, but he was looking not at herself but at Caroline behind her. In a kind of sick paralysis she waited as he made his way across the room towards them. Feverishly she searched his face for some discrepancy that didn’t tally with his dream-image, but there was none. She knew his face as well as her own, and she had never seen him before.

  Someone had put a glass in her hand and she drank quickly. Caroline was saying gaily, ‘Laura, this is the man I was telling you about, who used to live at Four Winds. Lewis Castleton, my sister-in-law, Laura Hardy.’

  His eyes, heavy-lidded and slate-grey, passed over her face without interest, but he said ‘How do you do?’ pleasantly enough and held out his hand. She could no more have taken it than put her hand into a crocodile’s mouth. She made some confused murmur about the glass she was holding, which he smilingly acknowledged before turning his attention back to Caroline.

  At least, Laura thought a little hysterically, he did not appear to have had the same dream himself! But as she remembered the feel of his mouth and hands, so vivid in the dream, the dislike which had come with awakening intensified into actual nausea, scorching and stinging at the base of her throat.

  Fortunately it was at that moment that Edward took her arm and introduced her to one or two people before settling her comfortably on a sofa next to an elderly lady who was their host’s mother. Mechanically Laura made appropriate replies to her remarks, while her eyes returned with sick fascination to Lewis Castleton.

  He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a tendency to stoop, and though he was dressed conventionally in a dark suit, it seemed to Laura’s heightened senses that he was happiest in casual clothes and seldom wore a tie. Perhaps, she thought bleakly, that was just something else she instinctively knew about him. The dark hair was rather long, as she remembered, but it gave the impression more that he had not bothered to have it cut than that he cared for the present fashion. He bent his head to catch what Caroline was saying, and as Laura’s eyes slid from him to her sister-in-law, their acute awareness of each other struck her forcibly. Caroline had never looked more beautiful, with her heavy gold hair swept up on top of her head, and there was a breathless, excited gaiety about her that sounded warning bells in Laura’s head.

  Anxiously she looked round for Edward, wondering how she could inveigle him to Caroline’s side before the attraction that was flaring between her and Lewis Castleton should reach flashpoint. But he had disappeared in the crowd and her searching eyes couldn’t locate him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ enquired a brusque voice on her left, and she turned quickly to see a tall, thin young man staring down at her almost belligerently.

  ‘Oh, I—yes—yes, thank you.’

  ‘I noticed you when you came into the room. I thought you were going to pass out.’

  Laura moistened her lips and thankfully seized on her past history. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m just recovering from a rather unpleasant car crash. This is the first time I’ve been out since.’

  ‘I see.’ The piercing grey eyes didn’t leave her face, and she had an uncomfortable suspicion that her half-truth was only half believed.

  ‘May I join you?’ he asked abruptly, and sat down before she had a chance to reply. ‘You’re Edward Hardy’s sister, aren’t you? My name’s Paul Denver.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Laura said a little faintly.

  ‘You’re quite sure you’re all right? Would you like me to get you a glass of water?’

  ‘No, really, thank you. It’s just rather hot and noisy, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly is. Personally, I loathe these ritualistic occasions.’

  ‘Then why did you come?’ she asked unthinkingly, and then, flushing, ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—’

  But he gave a bark of laughter. ‘Don’t apologize, it’s a good question. I came because Mr. Howard has been good enough to print some articles I wrote on higher education.’

  ‘Not another journalist!’ Laura protested, smiling.

  ‘No, actually I’m a schoolmaster.’

  She turned at that and looked at the thin, bony face with its high forehead and intent grey eyes. ‘I should imagine you’re a very good one.’

  His eyes held hers. ‘Thank you. I believe you’re right!’

  She smiled involuntarily. This forthright young man was a tonic after the denials and false modesties she was used to. ‘And where do you teach, Mr. Denver?’

  ‘Ledbrook Boys’ Grammar, for my sins.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Not really, no. They’re an average bunch. Some respond, some don’t. Others you know quite well could be brilliant if they’d put their minds to their work. They don’t, of course, and it almost breaks your heart. Such waste!’ There was a vehemence in his voice which told her that this was a pet subject of his.

  ‘And what subjects do you teach?’

  ‘English and history. I might add that one of your father’s novels is a set book for the third year this term!’

  ‘Really? How interesting! Which one?’

  ‘The Sentinel. It comes under the category “Modern novel by well-known author.” Am I right in thinking you once wrote a book yourself?’

  ‘Yes, but I doubt if that will ever be a set book!’

  ‘Laura—’ Edward was standing in front of them. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but I want you to meet Clive Sandilands. Clive—my sister.’

  Laura rose to her feet, Paul Denver beside her, as a rather short, pleasant-faced man came forward and took her hand.

  ‘Miss Hardy. Edward tells me you’re contemplating another book. I must say I’m delighted!’

  ‘Thank you. Mr. Denver was just asking about my first, but I’m sure he’ll be much more interested i
n yours. He teaches history. Paul Denver—Mr. Sandilands.’

  Paul’s pale face was flushed with excitement. ‘It’s a great honour to meet you, sir. I’ve admired your work for years. I was just telling Miss Hardy that one of her father’s books is on the curriculum this year. I need hardly add that your historical analyses have been considered works of reference for as long as I can remember.’

  Clive Sandilands laughed. ‘Thank you. I’m grateful for the compliment, even if it does make me feel as old as the history I write about!’

  Edward, who, to Laura’s relief, had at last moved off in search of Caroline, now rejoined their circle with her, but Lewis Castleton came with them and more introductions were performed. Castleton was standing next to Laura, and as he bent forward to shake Clive Sandilands’ hand, his sleeve brushed against her arm. She felt herself sway dizzily and with a surge of gratitude was conscious of Paul Denver’s hand steadying her.

  ‘Now, Clive,’ Edward instructed, ‘let’s have your findings! Is your study of violence confined to the United States?’

  Beside her, Laura was penetratingly aware of Lewis Castleton’s sudden stillness.

  ‘In this instance, yes,’ Sandilands was replying. ‘And it’s also confined to the sixties—The Violent Decade, I’m calling it. Of course, the outstanding instances were the ghetto riots and the assassinations of public figures—the Kennedy brothers, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. But I have a theory that they were only the tip of the iceberg, the outward sign of countless acts of violence some of which were never even recognized for what they were.’

  ‘Lewis,’ Caroline broke in eagerly, ‘didn’t you say you were in the States at the time of Robert Kennedy’s death?’

  ‘Yes, I was, as it happens.’ To Laura’s acutely attuned ears, his voice sounded strained, a little off key.

  ‘Really?’ Sandilands exclaimed. ‘That’s fantastic! You weren’t by any chance actually on the spot, I suppose?’