Squelch (2 page)

‘Then I suppose we’d better start clearing up,’ Sophie commented wearily when it was all over. She had already hunted down some of the escaped caterpillars, though six were still missing. ‘Thank God it wasn’t worse. Must be grateful for that.’

In the village some eight miles away from the Research Institute, Kit’s absence was not noticed for several hours. His mother came home from work expecting to find the kettle on but the house was empty. No eggs even, though she’d asked him to go to the farm for them. They were at least fresh from the farm which was more than she could say for Jackson’s in the village. Supermarket rejects he sold, she could swear. Oh, it was too bad of Kit not to get them. She’d put the money out; it was there under the vase still. He hadn’t eaten his dinner either. Those two bacon sandwiches hadn’t been touched.

She ate them herself with a cup of tea, glad to get the weight off her legs after standing all day plucking factory chickens. The line never stopped. It was as if they couldn’t wait to get deep-frozen, and by the end of the shift she
knew exactly what they felt like.

Though she was no chicken herself; no longer. Thirty-five she was and she’d already found a grey hair in her comb. She’d held it up to the window to make sure. It was grey all right. Or white. Her tits were sagging too, she could swear.

Where the hell was Kit? Should have been home an hour ago. With those kids probably, and up to no good. The
gang
, he called it; well, that was his age. Could do with a man’s hand, that was the truth of the matter. Come to think of it, so could she.

She yawned. A tired, long-to-sleep yawn. Then she switched on the telly and transferred to the armchair, kicking off her shoes to make herself comfy.

Just forty winks, then.

Two hours later when she woke up Kit was still not home. ‘Kit?’ She went up to his bed to make sure, but he wasn’t there, nor was he out in the shed at the back. Swearing she’d have his hide off, she would, when she got hold of htm, she ran down the lane to Lenny’s Mum. He was always on about Lenny.

Lenny hadn’t seen him since early that morning, nor had the rest of the gang.

There remained the police.

The next few days were a nightmare. Two brusque young detective-constables searched the cottage as if they were hunting for stolen bullion, raising floor boards, examining the water tank in the loft, even lifting the lid of the lavatory cistern. On Sunday morning the uniformed men assembled a team to trample through the ditches and beat the copse bordering the motorway. As one pointed out, they were hampered by the fact that there had been a heavy thunderstorm on the night of Kit’s disappearance. It would have wiped out any traces.

Kit had run away from home once before, the local policeman reminded her. On that occasion he had hidden
beneath the tarpaulin of a fairground trailer. It had taken a week to track him down and by then he’d been more than fifty miles away.

But although they issued pictures and appealed on television, this time all leads proved fruitless.

1

When she was first visited by the moths, Ginny misinterpreted the signs. She had moved into her new cottage that same day. At dusk they crowded the sky like a flight of starlings, hundreds of them alighting briefly in her garden.

As if to welcome her, or so it seemed at the time. Later on, she was to remember them with increasing bitterness.

It was late October when she made the move down from London and so warm, it might have been the height of summer. The leaves were still a luscious green and the garden was alive with me murmur of late insects. As she unpacked her crockery from the tea chest, piling it up on the old dresser which had been included, part-and-parcel, with the cottage, she noticed a drowsy wasp brushing against the window pane. Normally she hated wasps and would kill them on sight, or call Jack to do it, but this time she even felt sorry for it. She tugged the window open to let it out.

Ginny was twenty-six, though some mornings that felt like a hundred, specially when she looked in the mirror. What she saw was a less-than-attractive blonde, tired-looking, dark around the eyes, sour lips, and unfashionably short. Stumpy, she’d overheard someone call her. Unemployed, too – though that was her own fault rather than anyone else’s. She’d walked out on a job other girls were queuing up for. Director on a well-known TV series: she knew a dozen people prepared to offer up their
virtue on lesser altars than that, yet
she
had to throw it up!

Her mind had been in turmoil ever since. Of course there were still days when she was convinced she’d been right. She couldn’t have done anything else: it was a question of self-respect. Integrity. But on other days she knew she’d been a fool.

Now she was in the cottage she’d have to sort herself out. Already she felt better, just being there. It was a dream cottage: two rooms – one up, one down – with a lean-to kitchen, adjoining loo, and a mass of flowering creeper around the front door. Off the main road, too; tucked away down a meandering lane bordered by high hedges. Here, at last, she could be alone.

‘Ginny, I’ve fixed the bed!’ Jack’s voice boomed out in triumph from upstairs.

‘Great!’ she called back. She had left him the double bed and bought herself a new single which had been delivered in sections, ideal for manoeuvring up awkward stairs but hell to assemble. ‘What was the secret?’

‘What?’ His jeans-clad legs appeared at the top of the narrow, creaking staircase; then a hand, still clutching the spanner. ‘Oh, the bed? It was just a question of working out me underlying principle. Not really as complicated as it seemed.’

That answer was so typical of Jack, she almost threw a plate at him. Gadgets or people, it was always the same with him; just press the hidden spring, and he thought he could do whatever he liked with them. Well, this was one situation she intended to keep firmly under control. He came down, ducking his head to avoid the low rafter, and she recognised from the expression on his face that he was just longing to rough-house with her as a prelude to trying out the new bed. She was determined
that
was not going to happen. Not this time.

‘You’d better have a wash before you go,’ she suggested
coolly. Too coolly, considering all he’d done to help her with the move. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

‘You’re sure there’s nothing else I can do?’

‘I can manage now, thanks.’

‘You’re quite certain? If there
is
anything… Well, now I’m here I may as well…’

‘Jack… please…’ She could have screamed at him, but she held on. ‘Don’t make things more difficult than they are.’

His T-shirt was damp with sweat and clung to his skin as he peeled it off, tugging it over his head. Fragments of cobweb stuck to his sandy hair, cropped short for the latest television epic in which they had cast him. He had a swimmer’s shoulders with Olympic-class muscles; watching them, she felt the usual unease stirring inside her. Abruptly, she turned her back on him and fetched a couple of towels from the drawer.

The little kitchen had only one tap which was set high over a low, shallow stone sink. He bent down to hold his head underneath it, then turned it on, grunting as the full force of cold water hit him. Three years they had lived together, Ginny marvelled; three years in a strange, blind dreamland until one morning she woke up and realised that she’d fallen out of love with him.

It had come to her in a flash, quite unexpectedly. Like a blown fuse.

Months ago, now. Hateful months during which he’d refused to believe it, pleaded with her, quarrelled, demanded to know whom she’d been seeing, who had turned her against him, too hurt to accept that he had no rival. Love – if that’s what it had been – had simply died in her, leaving nothing.

‘Towel?’

Dripping with water, he reached back for it. She put it into his hand. Then, out of habit, she took the second towel to dry his back. While he rubbed his head
vigorously, she ran her forefinger slowly down the hollows around his shoulder blade. Oh Christ, why did he have to be so bloody physical?

‘Thank you for helping with the move,’ she said quietly, moving farther away from him.

‘Couldn’t let you struggle on your own. Least I could do.’

‘Hiring that van was brilliant,’ she went on. ‘Can you imagine a pantechnicon getting down that lane?’

‘There’s always a bed for you when you come to London.’

‘I’m sure!’ she laughed. ‘You’ll find somebody else.’

‘It’s not that simple.’ He draped his wet towel over the back of the kitchen chair, then picked up his T-shirt without bothering to put it on. ‘By the way, I meant to tell you. You’ve got cockroaches in this kitchen. And ants.’

‘I’ll get some insecticide in the morning.’

The hired van was parked in front of the cottage next to her own ‘battered baby’, as they had once dubbed her small Renault. Ginny helped him shut the rear doors, slipping the bar across to secure them. Before he climbed in he reached out to kiss her lips, but she turned her head, offering only a cheek. The hurt look on his face made her regret it immediately but by then it was too late.

‘You are going to be okay by yourself?’ he asked awkwardly. ‘I mean, I’ll stay if you want me to. Just for your first night.’

‘Jack –
please
? You promised you’d not make it difficult.’

‘We both promised a lot of things.’ He started the engine. ‘I’ll come down next week to see how you’re getting on.’

‘You’re filming next week!’ she shouted above the noisy revving and grinding as he tried to engage reverse.

‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday!’ he called out. She was forced to jump back to safety as he went into his
clumsy three-point turn over the rough ground. ‘Make it Thursday, shall we?’

‘That’s too soon!’ she yelled after him. How could she make him understand she wanted to be on her own? ‘I need time to settle in!’

In reply, he merely waved his hand. ‘I love you, Virginia Andrewes! Don’t forget!’ he sang out, then immediately roared off down the twisting lane, leaving her laughing in spite of herself.

She went back inside and began to gather up the torn pages of the
Telegraph
in which she’d wrapped her plates and cups for the move. A couple of months and Jack would probably have some new dolly girl twined about his neck. Some fresh young actress fishing for introductions to the right producers. When it came to recasting, actors like Jack never had any problem.

But that was no longer any of her business. She had cut herself free from all of it – from Jack, from that whole world of television, and their friends. Killed off a way of life.

For three years Ginny had done her stint as a director on that plodding tea-time soap opera. Then – at last – she’d been offered the first play in a brand-new drama series. A really great chance it had been and she’d given it all she’d got. Lived it. Dreamed it – well, Jack could bear witness to that. And that gas chamber sequence! Everyone was impressed: at last here was something to grab the audience where it hurt. Till the producer got cold feet and brought in the Head of Drama who tutted like some demented school-marm and insisted the footage had to come out. Ginny stood on her rights and appealed to the Head of Programmes, woman to woman. The ruling was not only upheld; the sourpuss demanded an additional cut as well. ‘Then it’ll go out without my name on it!’ Ginny had stormed at them furiously. They welcomed that suggestion so warmly, she felt she’d no alternative
but to put in her letter of resignation the same afternoon.

Her blood still boiled when she thought about it. That had been the best scene in the play, for Chrissake! The key to the whole lousy plot!

She sat at the little round table by the cottage window and went over it all yet again in her mind. What he said… what she said… ‘Keep your head down,’ the producer had warned her before that final meeting. ‘You don’t think they worry if the scene’s good or not? They’re scared of the pressure groups: I know the signs. It’s my guess they’ve had a nod and a wink from Downing Street.’

But she hadn’t listened. God, how
could
she have been so stupid?

She could hold it back no longer. Her head sank forward on to her arms and her shoulders heaved as she sobbed out her unhappiness. In a fit of pique she’d ruined her career. Destroyed everything. If only she’d knuckled under she’d still be working in television, on the
inside
, with more chances still to come. But she’d blown all that.

After a while she blew her nose, dried her eyes and told herself not to be so futile, but that only brought the tears back again. Who cared, anyway? She was alone here in her own cottage: no need to put on a brave face any longer. No need to hide anything.

With Jack gone, there was no one to hide it from, was there?

It was almost dark when she stirred herself at last. This wouldn’t do. Time to pull herself together and get organised. She began to hunt around for the matches. After inspecting the cottage, the Electricity Board had refused to reconnect the supply until she had it completely rewired and it might take weeks before someone was free to do it. Her sister Lesley who lived on the far side of the village had come to the rescue with a
couple of oil lamps she’d bought during the last miners’ strike.

Ginny found the matches and lit one of the lamps, placing it on the round table where she had been sitting. It made the room look quite cosy. Still sniffing – on her third hanky – she was starting to range the plates along the dresser shelves when she became aware of a wild squeaking sound coming from outside.

Bats?

She shuddered, visualising dark, menacing shapes swooping down to claw at her hair.

But then the squeaking came closer, until finally it seemed to enter the room itself. She pressed back against the dresser, biting her lip as she stared around apprehensively, trying to see what it could be. Quietly putting down the plate she was holding, she reached for the large wooden spoon which was the only weapon to hand.

The creature – whatever it was – flew about the room in great uneven circles. Its shadow danced around the walls, now as small as a dinner plate, now suddenly expanded like some demon magician’s cloak.

Then it stopped and hovered near the lamp as if preening itself. It was a large moth, almost the size of a blackbird. In that soft gentle light, the intricate pattern on its wings seemed like rich velvet, with varying hues of brown shading into each other and curling around brilliant pools of red and purple.

How gorgeous, she thought. How fascinating!

She returned the wooden spoon to the dresser and tiptoed to the table, not wanting to disturb it.

It began to fly again, fluttering around the lamp until she was afraid it might burn itself in the up-draught of heat from that tall glass funnel. She had a vision of those fragile wings bursting into a puff of flame, destroying it.

She reached forward and turned down the wick. For a second or two a tiny blue flame remained, dancing and
spluttering; then that went out too. The room darkened, though it was still possible to see. Outside, the sky was a dull grey from which the last tinges of the sunset had already disappeared.

‘Out you go!’

She attempted to shoo the moth towards the open window, cupping her hands. It flew upwards, escaping towards the ceiling, only to reappear a moment later and sweep majestically around the room. In the gloom it had become a huge, shadowy being like – she could not repress the thought – like some disembodied soul. Ridiculous idea of course; she knew that. After all, it was only a moth: wasn’t it?

Several times it collided with the glass of the little sash window, attracted by what remained of the daylight. Then it settled on the ledge where it seemed determined to stay.

‘Okay, have it your own way,’ she shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’

As if in reply, a full Hallelujah chorus of squeaks came from the garden and she realised the air outside was thick with giant moths, wheeling and fluttering like bluebottles over a dung heap. Should she close the window? But then three or four of them were inside already. One flew close to her face, its wings lightly brushing her cheek in a passing caress. She wasn’t afraid, that was the remarkable thing about it. Normally she didn’t like creepie-crawlies, yet here she was now – completely calm, for all the world as though she were receiving visitors.

The shrill squealing stopped, leaving behind a deathlike silence, tense with unspoken threat.

Nervously she stared out through the window but nothing was visible, only the dark silhouettes of tall trees against the dusk sky. She could swear they were still in the garden: yet where?

Moving as quietly as she could, she crept up the narrow, creaking staircase to her bedroom, where she leaned out. Beneath the trees everything seemed to be in deep shadow. Then from all sides of the cottage came a faint sighing on the air, like someone breathing, and the shadows began to change shape as a dense swarm of giant moths rose from the garden and appeared to hover for a time before heading south over the tree-tops.

Disembodied souls? The idea came back to her insistently. Hadn’t she once read in a book somewhere of a peasant community which believed just that? That night moths were nothing other than the dead returning to keep an eye on the living?