Laura Possessed

by Anthea Fraser

  ‘He has to be away for the day tomorrow,’ she told Laura when she returned with heightened colour from the phone, ‘so it’ll have to be Thursday. He has a friend coming that evening to spend a couple of days with him, so I said I’d go round after lunch and help him to hang them. I don’t suppose he has much idea how to go about it.’

  On Thursday, however, Caroline’s careful plans were thrown completely out of gear by a telephone call from Peter’s school at lunchtime. Peter had been accidentally hit on the head by a cricket ball and they were taking him straight to the casualty department of the local hospital. Could Mrs. Hardy meet them there?

  Caroline stood irresolutely in the hall, obviously torn between anxiety for her son and bitter disappointment at not being able to go to Lewis as arranged.

  ‘Couldn’t you take the curtains tomorrow?’ Laura asked, in a last attempt to deny the calm certainty that was growing inside her.

  ‘That’ll be too late. His friend will be there tonight.’

  Laura drew a deep breath. ‘Then I’ll have to take them, won’t I?’

  ‘You?’ Caroline hesitated and glanced at her watch. ‘All right—there’s nothing else I can do. If you’re ready now, I can drop you off at the bottom of Gillet’s Lane. You can’t walk all that way with the heavy curtains. Explain what’s happened, won’t you?’

  Lewis Castleton was, of course, surprised and, Laura felt, annoyed to see her instead of Caroline, but he had to accept her explanation and also her offer to help him hang the curtains.

  ‘Caroline has pinned a note on each pile, to say which measurements are which,’ she said as she unwrapped the brown paper parcels on the only clear surface she could see in the cluttered room. The ceiling of the cottage was so low that Lewis stooped even more, and the windows, small and diamond-paned, hardly looked big enough to warrant curtains at all. Against the walls were packing cases full of strange shapes wrapped in newspaper, and large piles of books and papers lay heaped on the floor.

  ‘As you see, I’m not exactly settled,’ Lewis said shortly, following her glance. He had still not forgiven her for not being Caroline. ‘I’ve ordered a large desk which will take a lot of that stuff, but of course it hasn’t arrived yet.’

  Laura shook out the folds of the first pile of curtains. ‘We put some hooks in—we didn’t think you’d have any.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘We’ll have to hold the curtain up to the window to decide how much to ruche it.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Ruche—pull it together, like this. These two pairs are the same measurement. Which pattern do you want in here?’

  ‘God knows. Whatever you’ve got there will do.’

  They worked side by side for the next hour, mostly in silence, measuring, ruching, inserting the hooks and finally hanging the curtains. There were only four rooms in the original cottage, two up and two down, but a bathroom extension had at some stage been added behind the kitchen. There was no hall; a wooden staircase went straight up from a corner of the living-room. Very little furniture was in evidence—a bed and chest of drawers in Lewis’s own room and a camp bed put up, no doubt for his expected visitor, in the other upstairs room. A couple of chairs stood rather bleakly against a wall.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ Lewis said sarcastically, and again she realized guiltily that he had intercepted her rather disparaging glance.

  ‘At least it all looks bright and fresh with the new paint,’ she offered placatingly.

  ‘I warned Harry he’d have to take me as he found me. We were out in Biafra together for a few months and I haven’t seen him since. Anyway conditions here are slightly better.’

  Biafra. Laura stood dreamily with a pair of curtains over her arm, imagining the whining bullets, the humidity of the thick forests, the sudden explosion of bombs—violence, violence which he’d seen at first hand. A memory stirred of Edward saying, ‘You should speak to Lewis—’

  ‘Come on or we’ll never get through,’ Lewis broke in on her thoughts. ‘Is this the last pair?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ Working beside him, watching his strong hands with the black hair on the backs of them, she felt strangely at peace, relaxed as she had never felt at Four Winds—except, she realized with a surprised tremor, the night he had been there. Odd how, at Four Winds last Friday and again now, she should all at once feel resigned—more than resigned, acquiescent, to whatever might follow. Mistily she remembered the revulsion she had spoken of to Paul, but it had no meaning here.

  Together they hung the last pair of curtains and Lewis stepped back, wiping his hands down the sides of his old corduroy trousers. In them and the rather ancient open-necked shirt which he wore, he looked much more as she remembered him. ‘Remembered’? She pulled herself up sharply. She had only seen him twice before and each time he had been wearing a dark suit.

  ‘Well, I for one am ready for a cup of tea. How about you?’

  Without waiting for her reply, he went clattering down the wooden stairs ahead of her, whistling tunelessly. Laura followed him slowly and stood in the centre of the living-room arching her aching back and looking round for a spare chair. This was the most energetic afternoon she had spent for a long time.

  Through the tiny diamond window-panes a shaft of sunlight struck like a pointing finger, alighting on one of the piles of books along the wall. Idly she went over and picked up the topmost book. It seemed to be a scrapbook of some kind, a conglomeration of old photographs and press cuttings with Lewis’s name at the head of the columns.

  ‘Come and get it!’

  She carried the book with her into the kitchen and laid it down on the breakfast counter, hoisting herself up onto one of the stools. Lewis was rinsing the milk bottle under the tap and standing it on the draining board. He hadn’t turned as she came in. Resentfully, she thought, ‘He wouldn’t be so offhand if I were Caroline!’ and surprised herself by the latent jealousy in the thought. She, who didn’t even like him!

  He leant over her shoulder to plonk a mug of steaming tea in front of her, and an electric tingle ran through her. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Please let me look—that mention of Biafra has aroused my interest. You must have had a fascinating life.’

  ‘That’s one word for it.’ He hitched himself up beside her, drinking from his own mug, which had no handle. Everything in the room was suddenly exceptionally clear, as though bathed in a hard white light, and her other senses quickened to the same pitch. She could smell the faint, aromatic odour of the tea, the tobacco which clung to his clothes, and hear the drip-drip of the tap he had not turned off properly. It was as though the whole room held its breath, waiting to see what would happen.

  Her hand was trembling as she slowly turned the pages of the scrapbook—yellowing newsprint, war pictures. She didn’t know what she expected to see. Then suddenly she had found it, and her breath came out in a long sigh. Alone in the centre of an otherwise empty page was a snapshot of a girl, a girl with fair hair drawn smoothly back, a broad forehead and wide eyes set slightly slanted in her face. Her mouth was curved in a smile of singular sweetness, as though it were someone very special at whom she smiled. The eyes in the photograph stared straight up into Laura’s own and she gazed back unmoving. It was as though she were looking into a mirror at her own face, though the girl bore no physical resemblance to her at all. Beside her Lewis Castleton sat as still as she, his eyes like hers locked on the page in front of them.

  Suddenly Laura moved, closing the book and pressing her hand down on top of it. ‘Lewis—this book I want to write—’ Her breath was coming so rapidly that she had difficulty in speaking. ‘Will you help me with it? Please?’

  His eyes hadn’t changed focus, were still staring down where the photograph had been and her hand now lay. With an effort he said, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I must—oh, please!’ The words were falling unintelligibly over themselves and, sensing his rising impatience, she struggle
d to regain control. ‘Will you let me write about you? Your life story? A sort of official biography?’ She laughed breathlessly. ‘I’ve been wanting to write about violence, and you’ve seen so much of it. Edward said that wherever anything’s been happening for the last twenty years, you’ve been there.’

  ‘I must have a word with Edward.’

  ‘Lewis, please say I can! Please let me talk to you and use your war diaries and scrapbooks—it all looks so alive in here!’ Her hand moved caressingly over the dun-coloured cover.

  He said slowly, ‘It was enough to live through it once.’

  She caught frantically at his arm. ‘Don’t you see I’ve just got to do it? I think this must have been what everything was building up towards. Paul said there was something—’

  He frowned and shook her hand away. ‘Paul? I can’t imagine what—’

  ‘No, I know. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you let me write your life. Oh, Lewis, you will, won’t you?’

  He stared down at her wild, pleading face, disconcerted by her anxiety. ‘Look, I haven’t seen any more than dozens of other men—’

  ‘Please, Lewis!’ Tears were coursing down her face now but she seemed unaware of them. Embarrassed, he turned away.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, write the damned thing if it means so much to you!’

  ‘I can?’ Her voice rose tremblingly. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful! How can I thank you?’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me. I suppose I should be flattered that one of the famous Hardys wants to write about me. And now it’s high time I took you home. I hate to think what interpretation Edward would place on the state you’re in! Get your coat, there’s a good girl, and we’ll go.’

  He almost bundled her out of the cottage and into the car which stood in the lane outside. Her face was like wax and she was trembling violently. From time to time as they bumped along the rough surface of the lane he glanced at her anxiously. At the gateway of Four Winds he drew up and waited for her to climb out. She said through shaking lips, ‘Can I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Not tomorrow, Harry’ll be here. Leave it till the weekend—perhaps Saturday.’

  She nodded vaguely, turned away and walked up to the house. For a moment he sat staring frowningly after her. Then with a shrug he started up the car.

  Part 2

  Caroline

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘You mean to tell me you let Laura go and hang those infernal curtains?’ On Edward’s face incredulity battled with growing anger. ‘Really, Caroline, I’d have given you credit for more sense! No wonder the child’s exhausted!’

  Caroline’s temper snapped. After all the anxiety, disappointment and frustration of the day behind her, Edward’s righteous indignation was more than she could stomach.

  ‘She’s not a child, to start with, though the way you all dance attendance on her she might well be, and a backward one at that! I told you I took her in the car and Lewis brought her back. She was only out for a couple of hours.’

  ‘And you can see the state she returned in!’ Edward retorted angrily. ‘An hour or more bending and stretching and holding up the weight of those curtains would wear anyone out, let alone someone who—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Edward, let it drop! Heaven knows, I wanted to go myself—’ It was rich, she thought on a spurt of furious, inward laughter, that she should have to explain to Edward that she had wanted to go to Lewis. Lord, how she had wanted! She remembered, with a belated twinge of conscience, that her thoughts on the way to the hospital had been more of disappointment at missing Lewis than worry about her injured son.

  ‘Apart from anything else,’ Edward went on, ‘I always have the impression she doesn’t care for Lewis anyway. I’ve caught her watching him like a rabbit does a snake.’

  ‘Charming!’ She spun the wheel of her lighter furiously. ‘A nice way to speak of our friend, I must say! The way you’re carrying on I might have been guilty of pushing Trilby into Svengali’s clutches! She offered to go, I keep telling you!’

  Edward looked at her for a moment and she saw the fight drain out of him. He turned away wearily. ‘Do you have to dramatize everything?’

  ‘I?’ She gave a hard choke of laughter. ‘My dear Edward, where Laura’s concerned, you’re the one who dramatizes endlessly—probing, sifting, worrying. God, don’t you know how sick I am of having that girl in the house, and she’s only been here a fortnight!’

  Edward said flatly, ‘You’ve always been jealous of Laura, heaven knows why.’

  ‘Jealous?’ She paused in the act of denial. ‘Perhaps I have, in a distorted kind of way, but in all conscience the reason’s plain enough. She always comes first with you, before me or any of the children.’

  ‘Now you’re just talking nonsense.’

  ‘I’m not, you know, and it’s time you faced up to it.’ She threw back her head and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Her eyes when they came down to his were hard and bright. ‘Do you know what my first memory of Laura is? No doubt you’ve forgotten the occasion, but it was hardly designed to set us off on the right foot, looking back on it.’

  He met her brilliant, challenging gaze warily. ‘I can’t say I remember, no.’

  ‘It was the day we became engaged. You took me back to meet your parents and I was a bundle of nerves. I hadn’t slept at all the night before. After the initial ordeal of the introductions, you took me over to where Laura was sitting on a stool in the corner. I can see her now, she could only have been about six or seven. And you took my hand and said, “This is Caroline, Laura. What do you think? Shall I marry her?”’ She broke off, fighting to control her breathing.

  Edward moved uneasily. ‘Well, it was only a joke, for God’s sake.’

  ‘A joke! In front of your whole family? Richard and Toby were there too. And I had to stand and wait, feeling like I don’t know what, while that little chit looked me over with those great saucer eyes of hers and eventually said offhandedly, “If you want to.” ’

  Edward smiled in spite of himself. ‘Did she really?’

  ‘Yes, she did. And only then did your parents come forward to kiss me, as though they’d actually been waiting for her approval! Given the chance, I’d have put her across my knee there and then, and I may tell you I’ve often had the same desire since!’

  Edward felt in his pocket for his pipe. ‘I admit it was a bit tactless, but it never occurred to me you’d resent it, let alone allow it to colour your whole relationship with her. Heavens, I wasn’t much more than a kid myself at the time. It’s perfectly ludicrous to have built it up to these proportions.’

  ‘But it wasn’t an isolated incident. Time and again we all had to defer to her. Richard and Toby are just as bad. They dote on her as much as you do.’ She moved over to the window and stood staring out, arms crossed. ‘It was your parents who started it, of course. They idolized her because at last, after three boys, they had a little girl. I must say, it’s lucky you were all so well-adjusted or you might have resented her furiously. As it was, you merely followed your parents’ lead. To give her her due,’ she added, turning back into the room, ‘she’s turned out reasonably well, considering that by now she must have come to expect her own way in everything!’

  Edward was staring at her. ‘My God, if I’d realized you felt as strongly as this about it, I’d never have suggested she come to live with us. Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

  She said levelly, ‘Because if you had to choose between us, I’d no doubt you would have chosen her.’

  ‘Caroline!’ He started towards her, but she instinctively stepped back.

  ‘Anyway, if I’d refused to let her come, you’d never have forgiven me, would you? Remember how you put it? “As head of the family, what else can I do?” And you also said it probably wouldn’t be for long because she was sure to get married soon. Well, her illness hasn’t done anything for her looks, and personally I can’t visualize a queue of admirers lining up in the foreseeable future.�
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  ‘Young Denver seems quite smitten.’

  ‘Oh, him!’ Caroline stubbed out her cigarette contemptuously. ‘A jumped-up little nobody who talks like Al Reade!’

  ‘Oh, Caro, come on! He might have a hint of a northern accent, but that’s all, and what’s wrong with that, anyway? He’s a steady, sensible fellow, from all accounts.’

  ‘Well, if you consider him good enough for your precious sister, who am I to argue? Lord knows if he’ll be able to support a wife, though.’

  ‘Aren’t you rather rushing things? They’ve only met a couple of times.’

  ‘Yes, but he knows on which side his bread’s buttered, I don’t doubt! These Socialists always do!’

  Edward lost his patience suddenly. ‘Now that’s enough, Caroline! I’ve seldom heard such nonsense as you’ve been talking for the last ten minutes. I’m sorry you resent Laura, but once she’s got her strength back, she’ll find a job and only be in in the evenings, and then perhaps you’ll be able to cope better.’

  ‘I consider I’m coping, as you call it, admirably well already.’

  ‘But tying yourself in knots while you do. Try to relax. Perhaps she can go to Toby and Janet for a while to give you a break. I’ll have a word with Toby about it. In the meantime, I’m going up to sit with Peter for a few minutes. Were they quite happy about him at the hospital?’

  Typical! Caroline thought resentfully. Having criticized her for exhausting his sister, he can now afford to give a little thought to his son! But she was tired of rowing with Edward. It was like beating her head against a brick wall anyway. She merely replied, ‘He has to stay at home quietly tomorrow, but he should be able to go back to school on Monday.’

  Edward nodded and left the room and Caroline resumed her restless pacing. If only she could have gone to Gillet’s this afternoon! It would have been the first time she’d been alone with Lewis. Heaven knew when there’d be another opportunity. Had he been disappointed when Laura had arrived instead?