The Haunt (14 page)

‘After what’s happened?’

‘Nothing happened.’

‘I just don’t understand. You’re a thinking man, and caring, but you won’t acknowledge this power. Don’t you realise it isn’t yours to withhold or bestow, you’re merely the instrument—’

‘Bollix.’ Soulsby went and sat in the stern.

The offshore wind dropped, leaving a flat sea with navy-blue cloud shadows. Holding to the bank, Clapham made for the headland. They passed a series of narrow valleys brimming with pink and purple rhododendrons: hidden water-courses emerged from the chaparral to form pools fringed with yellow irises. There was a gradually increasing concourse of pines on the slopes, and inland on level terrain a solid wedge of oak and beech with a dark underpinning of yews.

‘Pretty, eh?’ said Clapham. ‘I told Miss Gee she’d be
missing a treat. She said she couldn’t trust herself on the sea.’

As they drew level with the headland the temper of the water changed. Instead of a succession of travelling ribs it piled into combers, white-topped, slapping the hull.

‘We’re running into a storm,’ said Felicia.

‘Something big’s come into the bay and we’re meeting the swell. If there’s a blow coming we’ll soon know. The Devil’s Tooth they call the Point. Many a boat it’s chewed up.’ Clapham spun the wheel jollily. ‘Hundreds of wounded from the Peninsular Wars were drowned hereabouts.’

Soulsby said, ‘I read somewhere that gun-decks in the British Navy were painted red to lessen the shock of seeing so much bloodshed.’

‘George, you should be resting. It’s always the same after one of your sessions.’ Felicia turned to address the company. ‘My husband has a gift. He denies it, but you can all bear witness that it exists.’

‘Just forget it,’ said Soulsby.

The boat rolled gracefully, presenting first to port, then to starboard, and finishing with its prow in the air like a playful dolphin.

‘She loves a romp,’ said Clapham.

They watched him spinning the wheel with what they hoped was competence. Charlie and Senga were thrown together. Antony rushed to the side and leaned over.

‘I don’t mind this.’ Senga settled into Charlie’s arms.

He took the opportunity of looking closely at her pigmentation. ‘I think I’d like to paint you.’

‘Why?’

‘To find out about you.’

‘There are other ways.’

‘It would be my way.’

‘What did you find out about your wife?’

‘If a painting’s any good when it’s finished I’ll have learned something about myself as well as the sitter.’

She said soberly, ‘Promise you’ll tell me what you’ve learned.’

Charlie shook his head. ‘If it doesn’t work out I won’t have learned anything and neither of us will want to look at it.’

Uttering a maritime shout, Clapham steered into open water. The wind smacked the boat on its beam, precipitating it towards the shoreline which bristled with rocks. ‘Gunwallow ahoy!’

Felicia Soulsby was pitched forward to a suppliant position on her knees.

‘I’ve been sick,’ announced Antony Wellington.

Clapham left the wheel to look over the side. ‘Sardines are rising to the bait.’

The boat made for the rocks. Felicia screamed, ‘Water’s coming in!’ and they all saw the gunge on the bottom boards rapidly thinning to a soupy wash.

Clapham said, ‘She’s carvel-built, it takes her a day or two to tighten up.’

‘The boat’s leaking, we don’t have two hours, let alone two days—’ Soulsby dropped his hand on the wheel beside Clapham’s. ‘Turn around.’

‘We’ll all be drowned!’

‘There’s no cause for alarm, ladies—’

‘We paid to see the creeks,’ said Charlie.

‘Get us back to the jetty!’

Clapham looked round at them for confirmation. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘If you don’t,’ said Soulsby, ‘this tub’s going to take us down to the oceanbed.’

*

Clapham said ‘The wife put you up a picnic tea to have on the headland watching the yacht races.’

‘No headland, no picnic,’ said Soulsby.

‘She won’t be best pleased if you take it back untouched.’

‘I guess not,’ said Mrs Soulsby.

‘Have it here, on the jetty. You can still see the yachts.’

‘There’s nowhere to sit.’

‘There’s grass.’

‘I’d rather not,’ said Pam Wellington.

Clapham said, ‘There’s a nice flat tree stump, the ladies can sit on that.’

‘I don’t care where I sit,’ said Senga. ‘If there’s tea, let’s have it.’

‘Not here.’ Pam turned away. ‘Tony – this is where I saw it – in the boat—’

‘It’s where you made a fool of yourself.’

‘I think we should open Mrs Clapham’s lovely picnic,’ said Felicia. ‘We don’t want her to think we didn’t bother.’

‘There’s two thermoses,’ said Clapham, ‘cucumber and paté sandwiches and a batch of tarts made this morning.’

‘Is that Mr Eashing over by the shrubbery? He might like to join us.’

‘He’s asleep, having a sweet dream.’ Senga unstrapped the picnic basket. ‘Gather round everyone.’

‘Are you planning to paint the view?’ Wallington said to Charlie.

‘It’s too well connected. Boats showing their bottoms, woolly white clouds and blue water. Needs to be disrupted. By a figure. Or a tree.’

Clapham said, ‘I had to take the tree down. It blocked the view. First thing people ask is can they see the sea from the windows. Pity. Bit of history that tree was. A jerry pilot came down in it and got strung up by his parachute.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Died, like a fly on flypaper,’ Clapham said cheerfully. ‘Best thing he could have done. He’d have been lynched if he’d been found.’

Pam Wallington jumped up and ran. Mrs Soulsby, who was proffering a cup of tea, received most of it down her skirt. Antony Wallington ran after his wife.

Felicia dabbed at her dress. Soulsby took out his handkerchief but she waved him aside. ‘Go and help the old man.’

‘What old man?’

Tight-lipped, she pointed to where Eashing, slumped in his chair, had spread his hands open on his knees as though begging. ‘He needs help right now.’

‘He’s sleeping like a baby.’ Soulsby would like to be doing the same.

‘Did you ever see a baby adopt that posture?’

‘Want me to go and sit him up?’

‘What I want, what I have always wanted from you, George, is for you to share my concern.’

Eashing was leaning sideways, head and shoulders, lacking support, hung over the arms of his chair. His weight, displaced, threatened to tip the chair: its onside wheels were dug deep into crumbling earth.

‘Help him George – you must!’ Soulsby stirred. Felicia cried, ‘Hurry!’

Soulsby took a reluctant step, but quickened his pace when Eashing’s chair canted visibly and Eashing started to slide out of it. Soulsby was in time to take him by the shoulders and haul him and the chair upright. Eashing awoke to find the big man pinning him down. Panicking, he struck at Soulsby’s hands.

‘Hold still.’ Soulsby leaned on him. Eashing cried out, beat his fists on Soulsby’s chest. Felicia ran to them.

‘Relax! You’re safe – my husband has saved you. You were having a bad dream.’

‘I was having a beautiful dream. I dreamed I was running through a cornfield, through the ripening corn.’ Eashing cried, ‘I was
running
!’

Felicia said sensibly, ‘That would be bad for the corn. The farmer would not be pleased.’

‘I can’t run!’

‘Have you tried?’

‘I assure you, madam, for as many times as I have tried, I have failed.’

‘Try now.’

‘Why?’

‘My husband has touched you and he has healing in his hands.’

‘Felicia!’

She stopped over Eashing, her sparkling spectacles closing in on him. He lifted a finger to them. ‘Don’t they deflect your vision?’

‘What?’

‘I am wondering if these pretty rhinestones distort as well as decorate. I hope not.’

Felicia frowned. ‘I don’t find my spectacles distorting. But I urge you not to dismiss my husband’s gift without giving it a trial.’

A moderate man, with no wish to be more, Soulsby often asked himself how come he had married a woman who had a rapport with supernature. She didn’t know when to stop. It was the one thing calculated to worry him. He had strong qualms about what she was trying to do.

Felicia told Eashing, ‘You weren’t there when Mr Wallington fell getting into that dreadful boat and injured his back. George healed it with a touch. Your dream – why not try to realise it?’ She held out her hands. ‘Rise up and walk!’

‘I won’t be responsible,’ said Soulsby.

‘In Tunbridge Wells we witnessed a miraculous event.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing that up!’

‘It’s there, George, it’s always there. The unknown quantity.’

‘Nothing was proved. It antagonised people, they didn’t understand and they weren’t happy—’

‘
I
am happy, I am relieved, I am reassured, I am eternally grateful for my lack of understanding. Have you thought what it would be like if we understood? If we knew what goes on?’

‘That business in Tunbridge Wells damn near caused a riot.’

‘That business, as you call it, was a miracle which you performed. And that,’ Felicia said bitterly, ‘about wraps up my uniformity. I mean, why should you, of all people, have the gift?’

‘There is no gift!’ Incensed, Soulsby snatched off his glasses. ‘The kid in Tunbridge Wells was acting blind. When I passed my hand before his face he blinked.’

‘Naturally. All at once he could see. You can’t imagine what that was like, coming in out of the dark, seeing for the first time his mother, his home, the world!’

‘He kicked the dog!’

‘He was scared, he didn’t know how a dog was going to look, he didn’t know how anything was going to look.’

‘Why do you do this?’ cried Soulsby. ‘Aren’t I enough for you?’

‘The first time it happened was on our honeymoon. Don’t you remember? I twisted my ankle, you took it in your hands and I felt healing flow through me.’

‘That wasn’t healing, that was sex.’

‘George,’ on a floodtide of memories, Felicia took his hand, ‘you were always enough for me. But you have this
power and you owe it to the sick, people in pain, children, the aged – it’s given to so few, you don’t have to be a saint to have it, you must use it to lessen the world’s suffering—’

‘Christ!’

‘Like Him, yes.’

Eashing remembered his dream. He was a boy, arrow-swift, ephemeral and golden as the corn. His feet did not bend the corn-stalks, he was running on air, he had no past to covet and no future to fear. He gripped the arms of his chair, pulled himself to his feet and saw the ground rise to meet him.

*

‘The Bill’s here, Miss Gee,’ said Clapham, appearing at Mildred’s elbow as she was returning from her walk.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘To talk to you. Detective Superintendent Plod of the local fuzz.’

‘You mean the police?’

‘Been parking on a yellow line, have you?’

‘I don’t drive – oh dear – what can he possibly want?’

‘Like me to ask?’

Her hand flew to her throat. ‘No—’

‘He’s waiting in the entry.’

The policeman was sitting with his hat between his knees, reading the hotel brochure. She feared he wasn’t going to stand up when she went in, but after a moment’s appraisal of her, he did, causing the basket chair to explode with a series of pistol shots.

His uniform – any uniform – mortified her. It stood for indignity and rejection. She said bravely, ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘Constable. You won’t mind answering a few questions?’

‘If I can.’

‘You’ve been to the village?’

‘Several times.’

‘To the shop called Grandma’s Tidy?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was the last occasion?’

‘Yesterday morning.’

‘Why did you leave your name on the counter?’

‘Because the shopkeeper wasn’t there. I went to fetch an item which he had priced for me. I left the money for it, with an explanatory note. I couldn’t wait, you see, because my bus was about to leave from the Square and they only run every hour—’

He held up her note. ‘Is this what you wrote?’

‘Oh dear – did I do wrong?’

‘You saw nothing unusual?’

‘Only that the shop was unattended—’

‘You were not aware that the shopkeeper was dead?’

‘Dead? Oh no – he couldn’t have been!’

‘While you were writing your note he was lying behind the counter.’ Horrified, she could only stare. ‘The till was old-fashioned, like everything else in the place. It had been forced open.’ He took out his notebook. ‘But you did not notice.’ She uttered a croak. Having trouble with his ballpoint he did not look up. ‘What about the hunting-knife?’

‘Knife?’ The enormity of what he was saying – inferring – began to dawn. ‘I saw no knife. I saw no one!’

‘The item you took, what was it?’

‘A brass fly – oh you don’t – you
can
’
t
think—’

‘You were seen leaving the shop in a hurry.’

‘I had nothing to do with this – this awful thing!’

‘Awful! Why do you say that?’

‘The man – that poor man – robbed and murdered!’

‘Murdered?’

‘The knife – you said there was a knife!’

‘Used to prise open the cash drawer.’ When he leaned towards her she felt it was the readying of a predator about to spring on his prey. She cried wildly, ‘You can’t think that I – I had to run for my bus – there would have been blood—’

‘Have I mentioned blood? Can you produce the item you took?’

‘I haven’t got it – I gave it as a present.’

‘Who did you give it to?’ He rephrased the question with a hint of jocularity, ‘To whom did you give it?’ and she saw the claws of the predator unsheathed.

‘A friend – someone staying here—’

‘A brass fly? Funny thing to give anyone.’

‘It was a paperweight.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded, with conviction. ‘Can you produce the friend? To corroborate your story.’

Mildred found that she was wringing her hands. ‘I would rather not involve him—’

‘His name, if you please.’

*

Piper, called away from his column, his communion disrupted, found himself being interrogated by a policeman about Mildred Gascoigne and the wretched paperweight. Would he confirm that she had given it to him? And for what reason?