The Echoing Stones (21 page)

“Flora,” interrupted Arnold sharply, “I don’t know how you can be so cruel to a helpless old man you claim to be fond of. Because it
is
cruel, it’s making a fool of him – to go along with all this nonsense, pretending you believe it. It’s insulting: it’s treating him as a child, playing games of make-believe.”

Flora seemed surprisingly unruffled by this criticism; in fact she didn’t seem quite to see at as a criticism at all.

“Yes”, she said. “It
is
a bit like that. The total,
non-linear
, multi-dimensional reality that a child experiences – it’s something you lose as an adult. Well, most adults, anyway. A special sort of total, unblinkered awareness slips away as you grow older and can’t be recaptured. But Sir Humphrey
has
recaptured it, that’s why it’s so wonderful being with him. He’s in a different world, he’s breathing air four hundred years younger than our air,
and when I’m with him, I can breathe it too. It’s like a fresh wind blowing straight out of the past. The past is still here, you know, in this place. It’s everywhere. Sometimes you can even hear it, if you put your ear to the ground. Try it, Arnold, just try it. Lie flat down, press your ear close to the ground, keep very still, and after a minute you’ll hear it … the beat, beat, beat of horses’ hoofs from a long time ago, and coming nearer. Try it. Just
try
it!”

Arnold had no intention of trying it. It was damp and uncomfortable enough just sitting. Everything was cold and sodden and soaked in moonlight.

“It would just be the blood pulsing in your ear,” he hazarded. “That, and your imagination.”

“I knew you’d say something like that,” said Flora smugly. “And I knew you wouldn’t try it for yourself, so you’ll never know. But
I
tried it, Sir Humphrey told me just what to do, and, oh yes, I heard the horsemen coming. Every time. Each time they were nearer. That’s when we started making our plans. And to bring Charlie here too, as a protection against evil spirits. The skull of a sheep has a special potency because of the sheep being a symbol of innocence. And, of course, just the fact of being a skull. Everyone is frightened of skulls – remember how frightened
you
were, Arnold, when you first saw it? – Well, it frightens the evil spirits in just the same way.”

“Flora!” Arnold once again sharply interrupted. “You know very well that his is all nonsense. The idea of humouring the mad is all very well, but when it comes to …”

“I’m
not
humouring the mad! He’s
not
mad! There’s no such thing as madness. There are just different levels of reality, and what’s called sanity is merely one of …”

She broke off. Her eyes widened, her body tensed, and she seemed to be listening intently, fearfully, to some
distant sound. Not four-hundred-year-old horses’ hoofs, let’s hope?

And then he heard it too; far, far away, beyond the trees, beyond the moonlit stretches of parkland, faint as a bird-call, the sound of a distant scream … and then another … and another …”

“It’s
Mum
!” shrieked Flora, leaping to her feet; and before Arnold had fully taken in what was happening, she was across the moonlit glade and plunging into the dark, overgrown path. He heard the twigs crackling beneath her running feet, and knew that he’d never be able to catch up with her, though of course he tried.

Flora’s miscarriage had proved unstoppable, though the local hospital had done its best. Now she was sitting up in bed, pale and grief-stricken, and so chastened and quiet as to be almost unrecognisable to the parents sitting one on each side of her bed, wondering what to say. So accustomed were they to being contradicted and pushed into controversy every time they opened their mouths, that her present uncomplicated need for consolation was something they hardly knew how to meet.

And Mildred felt full of remorse as well. It was
her
screams that had brought her pregnant daughter racing through the night, stumbling over tree roots, and finally pitching head-long down the steep dungeon steps, slippery and treacherous with night dew and fallen leaves. Screams so unnecessary, too, for in fact she had never been in the slightest danger. Already, before Flora had even reached the treacherous dungeon steps, Mildred had been rescued from her terror by – wouldn’t you know it? – her accustomed escort, and now her knight-errant as well.

On his way to the car-park, Gordon had explained, he’d been passing along the main terrace and had become aware of some sort of disturbance going on in the dungeon. The dungeon should, he knew, have been closed to the public some hours ago; and so he’d felt he ought to
investigate
. Finding the main door locked, he’d ventured to ignore the DANGER and NO ADMITTANCE notices,
and to make his way down the perilous spiral staircase that led to the disused door in the East Wall. Managing, with difficulty, to draw back the rusted and long-disused bolts, he had arrived in the dungeon just as Sir Humphrey’s imaginary sword fight with his imaginary antagonist was reaching some sort of climax. Gordon had hurried to intervene but, alas, too late. The old man had already stumbled and fallen, hitting his head against the iron base of the rack and fracturing his skull. And it was at this point, said Gordon, that Mildred had begun to scream. Until that moment, he’d had no idea that she was there, crouching in the shadows. He could understand how terrified she must have been poor dear, and he’d done his best to reassure her, to get her quickly out of the dreadful place, as well as hurrying to summon doctor and ambulance. He’d done, in fact, everything it was possible to do, but to no avail. Sir Humphrey was already dead, he must have died instantly when he fell.

It seemed clear that in this fraught and alarming
situation
Gordon had behaved with exemplary good sense and presence of mind; and Mildred, though puzzled by some of the details in his account, nevertheless felt grateful for his kindness and concern towards herself.

Grateful yes, but not very much comforted. There was nothing in all this to relieve her sadness about her lost grandchild, nor to alleviate her feelings of guilt about her own share in the double disaster. If only she hadn’t lost control and screamed like that …

Flora, of course, was the one who
should
have felt guilty about Sir Humphrey’s death. She it was who had contrived that he should miss taking the tranquillisers prescribed by his doctor. She it was who had encouraged his delusions and egged him on to wild escapades far beyond his own feeble and disintegrating powers. By sharing his dim and wavering fantasies, she had instilled into them a life, a purpose, a spurious reality far exceeding anything he
could have dreamed up on his own, slumped alone in his chair dozing and muttering to himself in a kind of half-dream. Under her inspiration, he had begin to act-out these fantasies ever more realistically, ever more dangerously, plunging inexorably towards some sort of disastrous end.

This was no time for saying “I told you so!” though Arnold could not help remembering the many times when he
had
told her so: had warned her of the harm she might be doing to her aged protegé by her headlong encouragement of his every whim. “Don’t you realise you’re endangering his very life?” he recalled saying to her on one of these occasions.

“So what?” she’d retorted. “If he dies of having fun, of enjoying himself, of doing his own thing, isn’t that better than ending up in a geriatric ward with tubes sticking out of him while they cut off one leg after another? Isn’t it?”

Of course it is, she was right, as anyone would agree. On the other hand she was wrong (as anyone would also agree) in what she was actually doing.

What
was
the right thing to say, now it was all over, now it had all happened? He sensed that on this occasion, of genuine grief and shock, he probably wouldn’t get jumped on every time he spoke. She would listen. He actually had it in his power to console her in some degree. Console her for the loss of her baby, and for the simultaneous loss of the ancient scholar who had so mysteriously become so close a friend. Often, Arnold had asked himself how much she really cared about the old man, and how much she simply wanted to put everyone else in the wrong, to show up the experts as a bunch of fools. A bit of both, perhaps; but her grief for him now was genuine enough, and seemed bound up inextricably with the grief for her lost baby.

“He loved me,” she told Arnold after Mildred had gone downstairs to seek a cup of tea, “a wonderful magic kind
of love with no sex in it at all. I was the Queen, you see, he worshipped and adored me just for that, not for being pretty or clever or sexy or anything. I’ve never been loved like that before, and I never will be again, because it just doesn’t happen nowadays. Nowadays, love without sex is kind of kinky, but it wasn’t then. I’ve had something that no one else of my generation has ever had, or ever will.”

She paused, her eyes bright with tears; then continued:

“The most wonderful moment of all was when he learned that I was pregnant.
I
didn’t tell him, I’d have been kind of embarrassed, but I suppose he must have heard me telling Joyce about it – anyway, he was quite beside himself with joy, he was convinced that I was carrying the heir to the throne, and it made me the most important person on earth. I’ll never be as important as that again – ever. And don’t give me all that stuff about it not being real, because it
was
real. Our
feelings
were real, his
and
mine. You weren’t the one who was feeling them, so you can’t understand.”

She was dead right, he couldn’t. But again he kept silent, waiting, and she continued – dreamily, now,
perhaps
because the sedative they’d given her was beginning to take effect:

“Sometimes he thought I’d already had the baby, sometimes not. His spirit was so agile, you know, in the Time dimension, he could slide effortlessly in this direction or in that, and always be at ease in the bit of time he found himself in. That’s why you called him mad. People who can establish a creative, on-going relationship with Time – soothsayers and prophets and so on – always seem mad to those who can’t.

“And now he’s gone … and my baby’s gone. They’ve gone together. Perhaps that’s good? Perhaps it’s right that they should have gone that way …?”

Perhaps it was; but it did not prevent Flora collapsing now into bitter and heartfelt tears.

*

Presently Mildred came back, and it was Arnold’s turn to go down to the canteen. Mildred’s brief and joyous sortie into grandmotherhood, with all its hopes and dreams, was at an end, and the disappointment rendered her almost as tearful as her daughter. Miraculously, for the first time in years, the two of them were in each other’s arms, mourning their loss together.

Until that is, Sister came by to check Flora’s
temperature
chart, and cast a resigned and experienced eye over the little scene.

“Now, come along, Mrs Walters,” she admonished. “We mustn’t upset our patient, must we?” and then, more kindly, as Mildred scrambled to her feet, she added in a lower voice: “Now, don’t worry, Mrs Walters. They’re always a bit weepy on the second day. She’ll be just fine by the end of the week, you see.”

And indeed this proved to be the case. With the end of the week there arrived, quite unexpectedly, the errant Trev, unnaturally washed and brushed, wearing a suit, and correspondingly ill at ease. He introduced himself to Arnold and Mildred as “Trevor”, making it sound like a stage-name so unfamiliar was it on his lips. He even addressed Arnold as “Sir”.

It was all very sudden. Surely he could have phoned, Arnold reflected? Still, the boy did seem to be genuinely concerned. He had at least bothered to come all this way, and had contrived to dress up in what for him must have been fancy-dress in order – presumably – to make a favourable impression on these two specimens of the dreaded species “parents”. By the time the somewhat stilted introductions were over, and the young man had been despatched to seek Flora in her room, Arnold found himself gravely doubting Flora’s throwaway assertion that the baby wasn’t Trevor’s at all; and – even less plausibly in Arnold’s view – that her lover would actually welcome the notion that the baby wasn’t his? Had she just been
showing-off, trying to shock her staid and not-with-it father?

He would never know. And, anyway, there wasn’t any baby now; and when the couple re-appeared, with arms round each other, it was clear that something or other had been sorted out between them, to the satisfaction of both.

But what? For the first time in weeks, Arnold faced head-on the problem which had floated through his mind, on and off, ever since Flora had shown herself so efficient at running the Tea Room. One day, she would leave. Well, of course she would; and what concerned and caring father could possibly hope otherwise? That an attractive and intelligent twenty-year-old girl should be content to stay in a pin-money job like this for ever was ludicrous. It would be a wicked waste of her abilities, and no concerned and caring father could possibly wish for such an outcome.

All the same, this new development did put him in a dilemma. The problem was no longer vaguely located somewhere in the future, it was here and now. Any day now Flora and her newly-attentive boyfriend would be announcing their departure – back to the squat, maybe, or maybe some place else – and he would have to cope with the Tea Room on his own, including the vagaries of Pauline and Tracey.

Various options flitted through his mind during the uneasy days before Flora’s inevitable departure. The option he toyed with to begin with was the possibility that he might ask Joyce to marry him and thus to take over an appropriate share of the married couple that he was supposed to be. Now that her father was dead and she was a free agent – maybe feeling lonely? – she might be quite pleased to go along with such a proposal. No harm in trying, anyway. The worst that could happen was that she might say, “No”.

But wait: the worst that could happen, he suddenly
and disconcertingly realised, was that she might say, “Yes”. The way his heart sank at the prospect was quite disconcerting, and he tried to puzzle out why this should be. There were, of course, all the doubts and uncertainties that anyone might feel at such a plunge into the unknown; but over and above all this was the realisation of how sorely he would miss those regular little trips to the kiosk for his elevenses. Walking along the main avenue in a state of pleasant anticipation, on grey misty mornings and on sunny mornings filled with birdsong, under the canopy of great trees – this was part of the structure of his life by now. Why should he sacrifice so reliable and constant a source of happiness for the sake of so hazardous and time-consuming an enterprise as marriage?

Besides, he would have to divorce Mildred first, and think what a performance
that
would be! Lawyers – tears – furniture – letters: going on and on, for months and months, if his friends’ divorces were anything to go by … No.

Well, how about the only remaining option – that of begging Mildred to come back to him? That would save divorcing her, certainly; and of course it
might
work this time, if they both tried, really hard. But once again his heart sank at the prospect. All that trying, and then at the end of it just being married to Mildred all over again? The prospect was daunting. Still, the possibility was there, it couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. On and off he turned it over in his mind, sometimes optimistically; more often with a deepening sense of gloom.

Actually, he could have saved himself all this agonising, for as it turned out there was no chance at all of Mildred agreeing to any such project. She had other fish to fry, as Joyce might have said.
Did
say, in fact, when she finally heard the news, but by then (as she went on to remark) the die was cast.

Meantime, there was Sir Humphrey’s funeral to be got
through; and after the other mourners had left (not many, for Sir Humphrey had outlived every one of his contemporaries; and even his students, who had once sat in lecture-halls hanging on the great man’s every word, were many of them finding travel difficult by now, what with their arthritis and their heart-problems and their cataract operations) after it was all over, Arnold, Joyce and Flora repaired to Joyce’s cottage to revive their flagging spirits and chilled limbs with hot coffee. It had been cold around the grave-side, with a north-east wind blowing little gusts of rain and wet, yellow leaves across the upturned earth.

Not until they reached the shelter of Joyce’s small home did conversation begin to flow at all freely. Anecdotes, reminiscences and tentative plans for the future were bandied back and forth, in the course of which Flora revealed her intention of leaving Emmerton Hall at the end of next week. She would, she said, be joining up with Trev again. Not at the squat, though, they were through with all that. They were both going to get proper jobs, and move into a place of their own. Arnold, listening, could only pray that all this might come about, and that what Flora meant by a “proper” job might bear some faint resemblance to what her father might have conceived as a suitable career for his daughter.

Joyce, at the moment, had no plans. She realised, of course, that from now on she would be free, but she didn’t know yet what freedom tasted like and so was understandably wary. Also, she was deeply grieved by the loss of her father, burdensome and exhausting though the care of him had been during these last years. But she, of course, remembered him also as he was in his prime, and her tears fell fast. Soon Flora too was weeping. As often happens in the aftermath of a tragedy, the survivors find themselves reflecting sadly on how different the outcome might have been if only they, the near and dear ones, had
behaved quite otherwise than they did while their loved one was alive.