Simply Heaven (24 page)

‘Hell, in my book.’

‘I mean, seriously.’

‘Creepy sort of place as well. I should think there’s people been done away with up there and nobody any the wiser.’

‘And some.’

We come over the crest, and Bourton is laid out below us in moonlight that filters through a break in the cloud cover. In this light, in the distance, it looks spookier than I’ve ever seen it. Great clods of it lie in utter darkness, shadowed by the wings. The moat is black and oily, and laps against the lower walls as though it wants to swallow them whole. Blank windows stare, empty like the eyes of a psychopath, at us as we approach.

‘There aren’t any lights on,’ says Matthew.

‘Probably just looks like it. You know what those windows are like.’

‘Are you sure there’s someone at home?’

‘Yeah. No-one said anything about going out.’

He shrugs. ‘Great big cave of a house. I don’t suppose you bump into each other all that often.’

‘You’d be surprised. The family generally live in four rooms, apart from their bedrooms. You trip over them all the time.’

He shakes his head in amazement. ‘Doesn’t make sense. All that space, and you’re more overcrowded than in a council house.’

‘Beats me too. But there you go.’

We get closer. The house really does look dark. I scan the frontage for a chink of light, but nothing shows. I know Rufus is out – or I guess he is. But the family must be scattered about the place somewhere. If we were approaching from the back, the windows would probably be lit up like the fleet, but from this angle the house looks almost derelict.

Matthew pulls into the yard, switches off the engine and looks up at the lowering edifice. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, yeah. No worries,’ I tell him.

‘Do you want me to wait till you’re in, at least?’

I’m halfway out of the car, bent double to hook the bags off the back seat. ‘That’s really kind, Matthew, but you don’t need to.’

‘You got a key?’

‘Left it inside.’

‘Oh, well, then. I’ll definitely wait.’

I shake my head. ‘There’ll be my grandmother-in-law and her nurse, if there’s no-one else. You go on. You must want to get home. You’ve saved my life already. What do I owe you?’

Once more, he glances up at the house. ‘That’s eight pounds, my love.’

I give him my last tenner. I forgot to go to the ATM, I was in such a rush to get the train.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ he says.

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Are you sure? About me not waiting? You’re a long way from anywhere. I wouldn’t like to leave you stranded.’

‘Stop it,’ I say firmly. ‘You’re starting to sound like one of those movies again. I don’t want you giving me the heebie-jeebies.’

‘Well, if you’re—’

‘I am. Thank you.’

He shrugs again. Sparks up the engine. ‘All right then. You have a nice night.’

‘You too,’ I call. Stand in the headlights and wave as he backs up and turns around.

Then once he’s beeped the horn and taken off up the drive, I pick up my bags and walk towards the front door.

When the sound of Matthew’s engine dies as he crests the hill and enters the woods, the remoteness of Bourton Allhallows becomes crashingly evident. There’s the drip of a plaintive gutter, the crackle and fssh of wind in conifers, the sludgy, sulky movement of water in the moat. But there are no comforting background noises, no sounds that help me know that I haven’t just dropped off the edge of the world.

My footsteps sound out like an intrusion as I cross the gravel. Now I’m alone I feel vulnerable, as though hidden enemies watch and wait for their moment. I can feel their eyes on me: veiled figures hidden by foliage, crouched among shadows, regarding me with old, old eyes. I am not wanted here, a creature of the new world, disruptor, cranky-voiced invader: with my bright colours, my lanky gait, my unwitting flouting of a million unwritten rules. Mist rises off the surface of the moat, drifts across the water-meadow. I step up my pace, hear my footsteps change as they move on to flagstones, put my hand on the great iron handle, try to turn it.

It holds, solid as though carved from the door itself. I lay down the bags, try again with the full force of both hands, but without success. The door is locked.

A sigh behind me. I jerk to look over my shoulder. The courtyard is empty.

Get a grip.

A bell sits to the right of the door, set in the stonework: one of those old-fashioned ceramic handles attached to a wire that runs all the way to the heart of the house, where a deep-toned brass elephant bell, a souvenir of the Raj, hangs on a pivot. I grasp the handle, haul back against it with all my weight, hear the eerie dong-dong-dong echo through corridors and walls, up desolate staircases, and die away, soaked up by drapes and panels. Then I turn my back to the door, lean against it, for I would rather know what’s coming towards me silently across the gravel, and wait.

Nothing stirs within. The house, accustomed for centuries to repelling invaders, sits, broods, awaits my next move.

It’s cold. It feels as though the air in this courtyard has been imported direct from the Arctic. I wait for five minutes, hands tucked inside my sleeves like a Mandarin, but there is no welcome sound of approaching footsteps.

Just silence.

Then I try again, though I know that if no-one has responded the first time, they are unlikely to do so to a second. Again: dong-dong-dong, then nothing.

I consider my choices. I don’t really have any.

Damn you, Rufus. Why did you bring me to this place?

I don’t understand it. It isn’t possible that every member of the family has gone out. In the weeks I’ve been here, nothing of the sort has ever happened. There have been comings and goings, of course, but Beatrice, at the very least, is too old and too gaga to go anywhere much beyond the front step. I leave my shopping bags by the front door and take myself nervously off towards the alleyway that runs between the house and the offices towards the topiary garden.

The house breathes beside me. I pause at the doorway, peer into the gloom. Light barely reaches here, and the path turns the corner of the house before it lets out again. Going in will be like plunging into a cellar. The temptation is to bolt down it, get the ordeal over as quickly as possible, but the paving is a mass of moss and lichen, and my leather-soled town shoes have no grip. I’ll have to walk it, feel my way slowly, make certain of each step before I put my weight on it.

Into the dark. Three steps in, and it wraps around me: sodden and grasping, the temperature that of a place that never sees the sun. Before: blackness. Behind: the promise that some figure might block out the light. I edge my way along the house wall, back against it, hand over hand, prickling hairs on the back of my neck, hearing only the sound of my own breaths.

Maybe I should go back. Maybe I should sit on the doorstep and wait.

And no-one will come
.

My foot sinks into something deep and slippery, ripping the ground out from beneath me. Going down, I grab and clutch at the wall, scrape skin, fail to save myself. Flounder and bang my head. Damn it, damn it, damn it. The ground is soaking wet, my jeans drenched. I crouch, a hand on each wall, see stars, swear under my breath.

Hear another sigh.

Oh God
.

‘Who’s there?’

No-one answers. Of course they don’t.

Sick, sick fear now. Not something you can control. Not a sensation that comes from reason. Somehow I pull myself to my feet and find myself frozen against the wall. Go forward?

I can’t see. I can’t see what’s there
.

Back, then …

There could be anything
.

Breathe. Just breathe.

My mouth is open. I pull my lips together and swallow. Concentrate on breathing in, out, through my nose.

Eventually get my heartbeat under control. My blood still races, but the flutter dies back.
Get a grip, Mel
.

I unstick my feet, move forward. Pass the office window, the tongue-and-groove door. My hand touches a drainpipe. Greasy, wet, icy cold. But manageable. I slide round it. Halfway, now. Something drips on to my shoulder. I shake myself like a dog to get it off, slide forward.

White painted door of the gents’ toilet. Something rustles inside.

Rats. It’s rats, or some other wildlife in out of the rain. It won’t be anything bigger. Just go past
.

Another door: the ladies. Almost there now.

A sudden flurry of wings at the far end. Something – one of the doves, perhaps, that roost on the front elevation of the house – taking off and resettling somewhere else.

Yes, but something disturbed it
.

I cover the last ten metres at a stumbling, sliding run. Burst out into the moonlit garden with a combined rush of relief and terror. My flight mechanism is well and truly primed now. Stork-like legs carry me across the garden at a speed I hadn’t known myself capable of, dodging round the topiaries without allowing myself to register what might be hiding behind them. I lob myself against the garden door, crash through into the backyard and bolt towards the kitchen door.

Not a light on this side of the house, either. I know before I even try it that the door will be locked.

Where are they? Where the hell are they?

The big pines sough above my head.

Where are they?

There is no bell on this side of the house. Tradespeople are supposed to use their hands and wait, I guess: not disturb the residents. I hammer on the door with both fists, shout at the top of my voice: ‘Hello? Is there anybody there? Somebody! Let me in!’

The house laughs at me. I can hear it. I can feel it, mocking me: the scorn of bricks and mortar.

‘Where the hell are you! Somebody! For God’s sake, let me in!’

Nobody comes. These hateful people: they’ve left me here, out here in the dark. They want me to know.

This is a lonely, threatening place. The drive leads, silver in moonlight, through an avenue of ancient yews, winter foliage dripping, mysterious ticks and clicks as wood and leaf catch the breeze. I don’t want to be alone here. Too many spirits, too much history.

In the dark, a figure steps out on to the road in front of me, turns and walks away. It wears a long, black hooded cloak, like a monk or a highwayman, or someone dressed up for Hallowe’en, and moves with a smooth, thoughtful tread. I don’t know who it is. Frankly, I don’t care.

‘Hello!’ I call.

He doesn’t respond. Just carries on walking, slowly, deliberately, towards the stable block.

I try again. ‘Hello? Can you help me? I seem to have got locked out.’

The head is bowed, arms folded across the body. The cloak brushes the ground so that I can’t see the feet. He stops. Stands stock still, as though listening.

I’ve got goosebumps.

‘Hello?’ I say again, less confidently.

Slowly, the figure turns to look at me.

It has no face.

Halfway up the drive, I burst into tears. I’m zonked, and frustrated with myself for being so jelly-kneed that I’ve actually started hallucinating, and it’s as dark as it could be and as cold as a witch’s tit, and my husband hasn’t even noticed I’m missing, and to cap it all, it’s coming back on to rain – a sort of misty, sleety sideways rain that turns my lips blue and cakes my eyelashes – and I’m suddenly fully aware of why the snotty-arsed inhabitants of this shonky bloody country wear anoraks. And yes, I’ll admit it: I am scared. I am jangling with it.

I don’t believe in ghosts. Any more than I believe in angels or demons or mischievous pixies. But I saw
something
and the brief glimpse of the blank nothingness under that hood before it whisked away into the shrubbery was enough to leave me jittery.

So now I’ve got bush oysters coming out of my nose, double-wet all over my face and my feet are killing me as I haul butt up the hill in shoes made for swanning about city pavements in. And for some reason, in my head I’m singing a little song to the tune of ‘Camptown Races’, only it goes ‘Who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you-are? Do-dah, do-dah …’ I’m going to kill Rufus, if I survive long enough to get hold of him.

The anger, at least, is a source of warmth. I could swear the drive has doubled in length since I came down it. By the time I reach the top, sweating inside sopping clothes, it’s nine o’clock. The woods, which just seemed raggedy and unloved when we were going down, have taken on an altogether more menacing flavour now that I can’t see more than a couple of metres.

Over the soft-shoe shush of my feet on the pitted road, I hear vague rustlings to my left: furtive, creeping, chasing-and-fleeing sounds. Snuffles and lolloping. The crackle of breaking undergrowth.

I’m a hundred metres in, and I don’t know what to do.

It gets darker with every step. I have to take it slowly, though my instinct is to bail at speed. But I’m mindful of the fact that every time we’ve come down this way, the Land Rover has bounced through potholes like a fairground ride. The last thing I need on top of my current miseries is a sprained ankle.

Something shrieks over in the forest to my left, and I have a momentary out-of-body experience. When spirit finally reunites with flesh, I am shaking, my heart scrabbling to escape my ribcage, and I seem to have got a good fifty metres further down the road. In fact, I seem to be running, though I have no memory of having started to do so. The edge of my foot hits a hole, and I stumble, stagger, regain – just – my footing and force myself to slow down. It’s an effort of pure will. And once again, I’m cursing myself for a sook, because it’s not like we don’t have owls in Australia.

I walk on, try to keep my thoughts under control, but my pulse still tells me that I’m being stalked by something three metres high with teeth made of old tin cans. I can feel its eyes on my back in the dark. I can feel its breath on my neck. I wish I’d never come here. I’m going to die thousands of miles from home and no-one will ever know. It’ll drag me into its lair and make merry with my intestines, and all they’ll think is that I took off at the first sign of pressure, probably open a surreptitious bottle of champagne to toast my defeat.