Laura Possessed

by Anthea Fraser

  * * *

  It was very hot, close with the approach of thunder. Her hair was damp in the nape of her neck, clinging in little tendrils to the side of her face. The sun had disappeared and the light filtering into the room through the heavy branches of the tree outside filled it with a luminous green twilight.

  She pulled deeply on her cigarette and moved her head lazily to look at him. ‘How’s the book coming along?’

  ‘All right, I believe. I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘It’s good of you to give up so much time to her.’ She hoped belatedly that the latent jealousy in the remark hadn’t sounded as obvious to him as it had to her.

  ‘I don’t mind. You know, it’s funny, but I enjoy being with her. She’s a strange little thing.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought she was your type,’ Caroline said acidly.

  ‘That’s just it, she’s not. And yet—’ He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Hell, you’re the last person I should be discussing it with!’

  ‘I don’t see why. You made it very clear there are no strings. What were you going to say?’

  He took the cigarette from her hand and drew on it himself, his eyes narrowed against the smoke. ‘It’s hard to explain, but there’s some curious kind of affinity between us, and it’s getting stronger.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I think the root of it is that she reminds me of someone. God knows why—she looks nothing like her.’

  Caroline’s nails bit into her palms. ‘The girl you once loved?’

  He nodded almost absently, his eyes intent on the ceiling.

  ‘It was her photograph you removed from the scrapbook?’ she persisted.

  ‘Yes. Stupid, I know, I just didn’t want it to go out of the house.’

  ‘Go on.’ She was determined to sound cool and detached, to give no inkling of the frighteningly powerful jealousy that was tormenting her.

  He said awkwardly, ‘You don’t want to hear all this.’

  ‘But I do. Funnily enough, Richard said the same thing, about there being some kind of bond between you and Laura.’

  ‘Richard? Then I’m more surprised than ever that they agreed to let her go ahead with the book.’

  ‘I don’t think they’d any choice. She was so intent on it there was no stopping her. Actually, Richard did try to make her agree to go back to London with him that weekend, but we all knew it was hopeless. Anyway, it was Edward who’d mentioned you first as someone who had seen a lot of—’

  ‘Violence?’ Lewis asked softly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A charming reputation to have, but true as far as it goes.’

  Caroline drew a deep breath. ‘Have there been any more instances of her “remembering” things?’

  He turned his head and looked at her oddly. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, like the twisted trees, or that fairy tale about the little boy.’

  ‘Yes, there have, actually. Several.’

  ‘That reminds me, did you by any chance save Harry Tait’s life in Biafra?’

  She felt his body tense. ‘How the hell—?’

  ‘Laura told me.’

  ‘Well, I sure as hellfire didn’t tell her. You know, Caroline, there are times when she puts the fear of God into me, and I vow I’m never going near her again. And then—I don’t know. A sudden turn of her head or an intonation in her voice reminds me of Noel, and for that I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.’

  After a moment Caroline said tonelessly, ‘But you say she doesn’t look like her.’

  ‘No. Yet sometimes I’d swear, if I shut my eyes, that it was Noel talking to me. She even uses some of her favourite expressions. The first time I noticed it was when we were having drinks that Sunday. That was what shook me, nothing to do with my ankle.’

  Caroline said slowly, ‘You know, she is different. Of course, when she first came out of hospital we expected her to be—well, subdued, but as she’s grown stronger, it doesn’t seem to be her own personality that she’s reverted to. Not as she was before the accident, anyway. And she’s developed an odd way of talking.’

  ‘So it’s not just my imagination.’ There was a note in his voice which lifted the tiny golden hairs along her arms. ‘Odd in what way, would you say?’

  ‘Just—unusual, somehow. This morning, for instance, she came into the dining-room winding her watch and said, “What time do you have?” It sounded—wrong.’

  Lewis said very softly, ‘You mean she uses American phrases?’

  ‘American? Yes. Of course, that’s it! Because she hasn’t an accent it didn’t register, but that’s it all right.’ She laughed a little. ‘Perhaps she’s just been watching too much TV!’

  Beside her Lewis lay unmoving. At last he said, ‘Is there anything else you can think of?’

  ‘Not offhand, except for the endless humming. Sometimes I could scream! And it’s always the same tune.’

  Lewis’s hand snaked out and closed over hers, tightening remorselessly until she thought the bones would splinter.

  ‘Lewis! Don’t! Stop it you’re hurting me!’

  ‘What tune?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What is the tune she hums?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know.’ She rubbed her bruised hand. ‘That thing that was very popular a few years ago—someone and his something brass. I used to like it, but I’ve heard enough of it this last couple of weeks to put me off for good.’

  ‘Hum it!’ he commanded harshly.

  ‘Lewis, what on earth—’

  ‘Hum it, Caroline.’

  Hesitantly she hummed the first few bars and the words came back to her. ‘This guy’s in love with you—’

  With a suddenness that made her jump he swung his legs to the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands while his rasping breaths grated through the eerie greenness of the room.

  She said sharply, ‘Are you ill? Lewis—shall I get a doctor?’

  He turned his head slowly and she was shocked at the expression on his face. ‘It’s not a doctor we need,’ he said with difficulty. ‘If you ask me, it’s bell, book and candle.’

  She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  ‘That tune—’

  ‘It was Noel’s favourite. We were dancing to it the first time I told her how I felt.’ His breathing was still laboured. ‘After that she bought the record and we played it every time we were together. Whenever I hear it, things come flooding back—odd incidental little details I’d forgotten. And Laura has the same effect. Simply by looking at her, I remember things that happened years ago, things I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Like the clock?’ She was too distraught now, too caught up in his agitation, to care if she gave away her eavesdropping, and he too distraught to notice.

  ‘Yes, that damnable clock. That was another instance. It had stood for years on the sitting room mantelpiece; my mother was extremely proud of it. One day when she had punished me for something, I went in there. I suppose I must have been about eight or nine. Anyway, I had to stand on a stool to reach the mantelpiece. I simply and deliberately swept my hand along the length of it, and of course the clock fell into the fireplace and smashed in pieces. I can see it now, lying shattered with its innards whirring and coiling.’ He smiled thinly. ‘As you can imagine, it’s not a memory I’m especially proud of. The only person I ever mentioned it to was Noel, who wanted to know all there was to know.’

  ‘And who has remembered,’ whispered Caroline.

  His mouth twisted. ‘The same thing struck you?’

  ‘She was American, wasn’t she, Lewis?’

  ‘She was indeed.’

  Not Fenella Gray after all. She shivered uncontrollably. ‘Leave us alone!’ ‘Us’? Could that mean Laura and Lewis? But Laura wasn’t Noel—was she?

  She said on a high note, ‘Lewis, I’m frightened!’

  ‘So am I, Caroline. S
o am I.’

  ‘We must do something to stop it!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But, Lewis, it’s—it’s horrible!’

  ‘Not horrible. Frightening, certainly, but not horrible.’

  ‘Does Laura know, do you think?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what Laura knows.’

  ‘Edward will know what we should do.’

  ‘I said no! Nothing must be done to interrupt the sequence.’ He straightened at last and turned to her, his eyes burning in his livid face. ‘I forbid you to say anything to anyone, do you hear? Anyway, there’s nothing concrete. It could all be imagination. This premature gloom doesn’t help.’ He switched on the light and they blinked in its hard brilliance.

  ‘But I must tell him, Lewis! She’s going insane!’

  ‘Nonsense. She’s entirely rational. The most obvious explanation is that she’s being used, perhaps without her knowledge, as some kind of medium. And you don’t go putting them in padded cells, do you?’

  ‘But surely we ought!’

  ‘Caroline!’ His voice lashed out at her and she came to an abrupt halt. ‘I lost her once. No one’s going to make me lose her again!’

  She said jerkily, ‘You’re the one who’s insane!’

  ‘Perhaps. Heaven knows, it wouldn’t be surprising if I were. But in the meantime you’re to say nothing to anyone about this. I should only deny it anyway, and perhaps you’d be the one ending up with a psychiatrist!’

  ‘This is the end, isn’t it?’ Her voice was shaking. ‘We can’t go on after this.’

  ‘I don’t know. God, I don’t know anything! Caroline, I’m sorry! It’s not as though I can control it. You saw how it was at Four Winds.’

  She stared at him, her face white. ‘You mean it was Noel that—? My God, you are mad!’

  ‘Can you honestly tell me you don’t feel anything in that house?’

  Against her will she remembered the impression she had received of the house pitting itself against her, the uncomfortable awareness of a malevolence, a kind of spite towards herself. Jealousy?

  A sudden crash of thunder sounded directly overhead and the light flickered as lightning sliced through the room. At the same instant rain started to fall, drumming on the leaves of the tree outside and turning the approach lane into a sea of mud in seconds.

  Caroline said shakily, ‘That tree’s too close for comfort!’

  ‘It’s all right, we’re in a dip here. Plenty of higher landmarks for it to strike.’

  The violent interruption of the storm was welcomed by both of them. Lewis said matter-of-factly, ‘One thing’s sure, you can’t go home in this.’

  ‘Could I have a shower, then?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll come down with you and put the kettle on for a cuppa too.’

  By the time she emerged from the bathroom extension, he had laid mugs on the kitchen table together with a packet of sugar and a bottle of milk.

  ‘Afternoon tea at the Ritz!’ Lewis said with a grin. ‘Help yourself. I’ll have a quick shower too and get dressed.’ He gestured down at his dressing-gown. ‘The Noel Coward image is hardly me!’

  She sat down and poured milk into the mugs. The kitchen window looked out at the back of the cottage, a drenched jungle of overgrown grass and bushes, with the straggling outskirts of Gillet’s Wood apparently only kept at bay by the broken-down fence.

  She wouldn’t come here again. She knew it, and so did Lewis. Their brief, tempestuous affair was over. Perhaps it was as well, since she was incapable of finishing it herself, that it had ended this way.

  After a while he joined her, reaching out for his mug. ‘It’s still bucketing down. Where are you supposed to have been this afternoon?’

  ‘Shopping in Ledbrook.’

  ‘Then I’ll say I found you sheltering from the rain and ran you home. As long as no one happens to see which direction the car comes from, that should cover us.’

  ‘You might as well stay for an evening meal, since you’d only have to come back again to see Laura. You won’t be able to sit under your tree today.’

  He leant over, took up her hand and kissed the palm.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Just to say thank you.’

  ‘And—good-bye?’

  ‘In one sense, yes. I’ve behaved very badly, I know. I haven’t hurt you too much, have I?’

  ‘No,’ she answered steadily. ‘You never pretended it would last.’

  ‘We can still be friends?’

  ‘We’ll have to be, won’t we, if you continue to see Laura?’

  ‘Yes.’ The abstraction was back in his face and quite suddenly she had had enough. She scraped her chair back.

  ‘Will you take me now? It’s almost six. Peter will wonder what’s delayed me.’

  ‘Of course. You’d better put my jacket over your head and make a run for the car. I’m afraid I don’t possess an umbrella. I’ll go first and open the door.’

  Edward was in the hall when they arrived, shaking the rain from his jacket. ‘Lord, what a day! Hello, Lewis. Did you rescue Caro? That’s very good of you. Come and have a drink. Good heavens, let’s have a bit of light on the subject. It’s like the dead of night in here!’

  Caroline said steadily, ‘I’ve asked Lewis to stay and eat with us, to save his coming back later. I’ll just go and tell Mrs. Baines we’ll be one extra for dinner.’

  ‘Fine. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll run up and change. I’m drenched! Pour yourself a drink, Lewis. I shan’t be a moment.’

  Peter came hurtling down the stairs. ‘Where were you, Mum?’

  She ruffled his hair. ‘Sheltering from the rain, silly!’

  ‘I haven’t any homework today!’

  ‘Lucky you!’

  She was behaving admirably, she told herself, not at all like a woman who has had to bow gracefully out of a relationship she would much rather have continued. It would take time, nevertheless, to school her body to ignore Lewis Castleton.

  She left Peter helping Mrs. Baines arrange cheese biscuits on a plate and went back to the sitting-room.

  ‘It won’t be—’ She broke off. Lewis and Laura were standing close together in the centre of the room, her face lifted to him with a radiancy which made Caroline catch her breath. With a choked murmur which neither of them heard, she retreated and closed the door softly behind her.

  Part 3

  Lewis

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Lewis returned to the cottage that evening, the mugs were still on the kitchen table and the milk in the bottle had turned, pervading the small room with its rancid odour. He poured it down the sink, watching the yellow globules separate and splay out against the white porcelain.

  He rinsed the bottle, waiting until the water ran hot enough to remove the clogging cream round the neck, and then the two mugs. Now there was no reminder of Caroline but the rumpled bed upstairs. God, what a day!

  He moved a hand over his forehead, pushing back the thick damp hair. The rain hadn’t made it any cooler. He switched on the transistor, half-listening to the aimless patter of the disc jockey as he took a can of beer from the fridge and poured it into a glass. Then he hitched himself onto a corner of the table and fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes. His fingers, he noted dispassionately, were stained with nicotine. What the hell? If it killed him, he didn’t care. His eyes returned broodingly to the upturned mugs on the draining board. Here, away from Four Winds and its tentacles, the idiocy of allowing the affair with Caroline to finish struck him forcibly for the first time. Of all the damn-fool things to do, especially when she was obviously anxious for it to continue. How could he possibly have let that pale, slip of a girl come between him and voluptuous, passionate Caroline?

  He moved impatiently, drank deeply from his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The rain was still drumming relentlessly on the corrugated steel roof of the bathroom extension, and he felt as though it were beating on exposed nerves.

  Restle
ssly he moved through to the living room, quite attractive now with the scattered rugs on its stained boards and the couple of easy chairs he had managed to pick up. He went over to the massive desk he had come across in a junk shop and which took up far more than its share of the small room. He unlocked it and as he pulled down the flap, his eyes fell on the photograph he had removed from the scrapbook. Incredibly, it was the only one he had of her. They had both been too cautious to use cameras.

  Involuntarily his hand went out to pick it up, his eyes travelling millimetre by millimetre over the face that looked back at him, so intently that the image itself blurred in the minute, speckled detail of the paper on which it was printed.

  The old, desperate sense of loss raged inside him. ‘I found this,’ she had said, reaching into her purse. He paused on the word, smiling even in his agony. Was that what Laura called her handbag now? ‘I thought you might like it. I won’t write on it or anything. It’s better not, but you know what I’d write if I could, don’t you? “This gal’s in love with you!” ’

  They had been in that little hamburger bar in downtown New York, but even so she was wearing the dark glasses she always insisted on when they were out together.

  ‘It makes me feel I’m going around with Greta Garbo!’ he’d teased her.

  ‘But you do understand, darling?’ she’d pleaded. ‘If there was ever any hint—’

  ‘Oh, I understand!’ He hadn’t troubled to hide his bitterness, even though he knew that it hurt her. ‘We must never take any risks that might upset your precious husband, must we? What does it matter if we happen to be tearing ourselves apart, as long as he’s all right?’

  ‘Lew!’ Her face was white, but he couldn’t see her eyes through the damn glasses. ‘Honey, I did warn you, right from the first.’

  ‘Oh yes, I was lucky to make even first base with you, wasn’t I? What was it they called you? The chaste, the untouchable Mrs.—’

  ‘Hush!’ Frantically she leant forward and laid a finger on his mouth and he caught hold of it with a reassuring pressure.

  ‘All right, I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I never meant this to happen,’ she went on tremulously. ‘You see, it’s what he’s always been afraid of, that I’d find someone—’