The Evil Seed (12 page)

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘This
is very interesting. I really had no idea.’ The sentences were meaningless in
her mouth, but sufficed to give her the courage to ask the question she wanted
to ask.

‘Tell me …’ she said, ‘do
you know a girl called Virginia Ashley? Red-haired girl … slim, very pretty?
She has a friend, a dark man with a ponytail … black trenchcoat. Have you
seen them near here?’

The Reverend Holmes
thought about it for a moment.

‘I don’t think so,’ he
said at last. ‘Not that that means much, you know … my memory isn’t what it
should be … especially … ah … faces
…
but I might … Redhead,
did you say? No. But I’ll certainly look out for her if she’s a friend of
yours. What was the name again?’

‘No, it’s all right,’
said Alice. ‘It’s nothing. I just thought you might know her. I really do have
to go now. Thank you so much. Thank you.’

And on that, she turned
and left the church, almost running through the churchyard, even though most of
the mess had by now been cleared up: only a toppled gravestone remained and
some meaningless scrawlings in red spray-paint. The sunlight was bright in the
lane outside, the walk across the fields to Cambridge so different from the
walk of her dream that Alice began to feel better. No, it could not have
happened. Even the trail of footprints across the cornfield (three tracks
together and a fourth, winding cautiously round the outside in the shadows)
might have been someone else’s.

And while Alice made her
way along the Backs towards the town, a figure walked softly into the church,
came in through the vestry door and hesitated at the entrance to the nave, the
light from the stained-glass window throwing multicoloured reflections on to
her bright hair. For a moment, she watched the priest standing by the altar in
silence, then she came towards him with hardly a sound, her ballet shoes barely
a whisper of leather against the stone as she ran, cat-like, to the altar. As
she passed it, the sanctuary light went out, but the priest did not notice.

One

ROBERT WAS MY OLDEST FRIEND; MY BEST AND
ONLY TRUE friend. He was two years older than I; that made him twenty-seven,
but to me he was so much more mature and aware that he seemed to move in an
entirely different sphere. He had been in the war (I myself had been judged
unfit for service because of my poor eyesight), and had been sent home from
Alamein after taking a volley of shrapnel in his leg; now he walked with a
limp, which in my eyes gave him even greater sophistication. I would have given
anything to be like him, to be handsome and popular, to have followed him to
the war and to have been a hero. He was everything I admired and wanted to
emulate. He was taller than I was, loose-limbed and naturally at ease in the
slightly overlarge suits and overcoats he tended to affect, with brown hair
falling carelessly over eyes which were clear and humorous. He was studying
English literature, the course he had been obliged to give up at the beginning
of the war, and had already nurtured in me a passion for Keats and Rossetti and
Swinburne. He smoked foul-smelling cigarettes, spent hours in crowded
coffee-shops, drank cup after cup of black coffee and talked incessantly about
literature. I had read some of his writings, and they were youthful, incisive,
sometimes gently self-mocking. There was never any doubt in my mind then that
his work would some day be published; I followed his progress with pride and
admiration, but no envy. That came later, with Rosemary.

I would no more have
hidden recent events from Robert than forgotten to breathe. Of course I told
him. I told him everything in those days, he accepting this proof of my
admiration of him as if it were his due, and with the kind of half-contemptuous
indulgence he might have shown to a younger brother. I never resented this,
feeling privileged that he should choose my company over that of so many
others, and with him I shared my passions and my enthusiasms and even my
dreams, which for days had been filled with Rosemary.

I found him in his usual
place, drinking coffee and reading a book. I must have looked a sorry sight; I
had not slept that night at all, my suit was crumpled, my eyes watery and my
hair uncombed. Besides that, I had the beginnings of a streaming cold from jumping
into the river; my throat was sore and my limbs ached. I told you I was no man
of action. He grinned easily at me as I came in, stubbing out his cigarette in
the marble ashtray in front of him. He put down the book he was reading (Morris’s
News from Nowhere)
and beckoned the waitress to fetch another pot of
coffee and a cup.

‘Have you read this?’ he
demanded, waving the book vaguely in my direction. ‘Marvellous. Did you know …’
His brow creased slightly as he took in my crumpled appearance. ‘What happened
to you?’ he queried, with some amusement. ‘You look like a mad inventor. Have
you been out on the tiles again, or are you simply cultivating a kind of
Byronic disarray?’

I swallowed, trying to
tame the hair which was falling over my eyes.

‘I thought you had to
give a class this morning,’ continued Robert. ‘Aren’t you late?’ He looked at
his watch. ‘It’s past nine.’

I shook my head,
flinging my hat on the table. ‘I cancelled it.’

‘How very dashing of
you,’ he said. ‘Go on then, don’t keep me in suspense. I suppose whatever it is
is something terribly exciting to make you skip classes. You’re always so
enviably precise.’ And he sighed, a kind of self-mocking dramatic sigh you
might have expected from Keats or Beardsley. He was laughing at me again,
gently making fun of me, but underneath that I could tell that he was really
puzzled, perhaps a little worried. Robert’s veneer of sophistication was really
rather thin, despite appearances; what others often mistook for pretentiousness
was in reality nothing but protective coloration. I think retrospectively that
he was an insecure man. Propelled from the hermetic atmosphere of public school
and Cambridge into a traumatic, though mercifully brief, period of combat, he
had returned to Cambridge to escape from ugliness in whatever way he could; he
had retreated into the close circle of the Cambridge intellectuals, going to
lectures, staying up late to talk about art and poetry in smoky coffee-shops.
To him it was all escapism, and while his doting father was willing to
encourage and finance his study, Robert was happy to remain the eternal
student, gravitating towards ever more intellectual pursuits, shielded from
pain and the unwanted complexity of adult relationships. Young as I was then, I
saw only the carefree, handsome exterior; later, with Rosemary, I saw my friend
stripped bare, but at the beginning he was my strength, my buffer against a
cruel world. He encouraged me in my work, talked to me, tolerated me; my
gratitude was such that at that time I would willingly have died for him.

My story must have
sounded garbled to him; I remember his smile, his hand coming down soothingly
on my shoulder.

‘Steady down, old
fellow,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m never at my best first thing
in the morning.’

I accepted his offer of
coffee, tried to stop my hands from trembling around the china cup, began
again.

I think I was more
coherent then; he listened to me, a faint crease between his brows, the cup
held in the palm of one hand, a cigarette in the other, its smoke idling
unhindered towards the ceiling. Once or twice he asked a question, nodded; I
stumbled forward in my narrative, trying vainly to put words to what I felt, the
words cleaving to my tongue as I spoke. When I had stopped speaking, I drank
deeply from my cup, blew my nose and waited, watching him over my glasses,
half-contorted with fear lest he should laugh at me, for he did sometimes hurt
me with his mockery, although he never meant to. Maybe he saw the fear in my
eyes, because he paused, almost appraisingly, as if deciding whether to treat
my story seriously or to take it as a joke. He took a drag at his cigarette,
blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth and frowned.

‘Seems like a funny kind
of business to me,’ he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. ‘I wonder
if you’re not landing yourself in trouble somehow.’

I shook my head
violently. ‘Oh, no! If only you’d
seen
her, Robert, you’d know that isn’t
true. I know how odd it sounds, but … oh, confound it! There’s no way I can
put it into words. She’s a miracle, Rob, a dream come true. She’s from another
age.

Robert cast me a
humorous look.

‘She certainly seems to
have taken you back to the age of chivalry,’ he said.

‘Oh, please be serious!’
I said. ‘If only you had seen her.’

‘I doubt whether it
would have made any difference,’ he said lazily, ‘I think I’m immune to women.
They never seem to have any conversation other than themselves and their clothes
and other women. I know your experience isn’t vast, but believe me, after you’ve
known a few …’

His eyes twinkled, and I
knew he was making fun of me; that languid tone was not the real Robert, but
the man behind the many affectations was an elusive character, and I had not
encountered him often.

‘However, I admit to
some curiosity,’ he said, ‘I have not yet encountered the perfect woman, and I
would very much like to see her.’

I sighed with relief,
clapped Robert on the back and managed to spill a cup of coffee in my
enthusiasm. I felt like a schoolboy who has just been complimented by a
sixth-form hero.

‘Good man!’ I cried. ‘We’ll
see her now. Shall we? You won’t be disappointed, Rob. You’ll love her, you
really will. You won’t be disappointed.’

As it happened, I was
right; he did love her, and he was not disappointed. Cold enough comfort that
offers me, even though I could not be expected to know — how could I have
known? I am blameless, I know that, but the knowledge does not stop my ultimate
guilt, or obliterate the memory of the youthful joy I felt that day, as I
happily led my friend across the river to his destruction.

Two

WELL, THOUGHT ALICE, THAT LINE OF ENQUIRY
HAD ONLY led to a baffling dead end. The Reverend Holmes had certainly never
seen Ginny or her friends, nor had anything he told Alice seemed to
corroborate her dream. She was still inclined to think that Ginny had gone out
with friends to buy or sell drugs and what Alice herself had experienced had
simply been an isolated incident of memory loss caused by exhaustion or the
beginnings of some virus. Fair enough. It sounded convincing. But there was
still the mystery of Ginny to solve; still Alice’s resolution to befriend the
girl and try to give her what help she could; and to do that, she needed to
know more about her. Joe? She remembered his chilly response to her earlier
questions on the phone, and doubted that he would be of any help. Who, then?

Alice pondered the
question for a moment, frowning, then her face cleared. Reaching for the
directory, she flicked quickly through the medical section, allowing her
fingers to come to rest on the letter F.

‘Hello? My name is Alice Farrell. I wonder
if you could give me a few details on a former patient of yours.’

‘Please wait a moment.’
The receptionist’s voice was cool and competent. ‘I’ll put you through to the
doctor on duty.’

Alice waited for a few
minutes, while the hospital’s hold system piped would-be soothing music through
the earpiece. Then she heard the tone change, and a man’s voice, dry and
faintly irritable, answered.

‘Yes? Menezies speaking.’

Alice repeated what she
had told reception. ‘Why the enquiry?’ the doctor asked. ‘Are you professionally
interested?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Well, in that case, I’m
very busy.’

‘Just a few details,
please. This girl is going to be staying with me for a few days, and I’m a
little worried about her mental condition.’

‘Then make an
appointment for her. All cases are treated as confidential here. I don’t
discuss my patients.’

‘I don’t need confidential
details,’ began Alice, ‘I just need to know if a girl called Virginia Ashley
was a patient here, and whether she is likely to need special help—’

‘Look,’ snapped the
doctor. ‘There are dozens of doctors in this hospital. I don’t know the case at
all. Obviously someone else treated her. If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll
tell you the name of the colleague who dealt with her case, and you can contact
him.’

And he slammed the
receiver back on to hold. Alice waited again. After a much longer time, the receiver
was lifted, and she heard the man’s voice again, more distant this time, as if
the line had suddenly worsened.

‘Ms Farrell?’

‘Yes?’

‘Miss Ashley was
admitted to Fulbourn last Christmas on a short-term basis. That’s all the
information I’m able to give.’

‘Can I talk to the
doctor in charge of her case?’ said Alice.

‘I’m sorry; that’s
impossible.’

‘Could you give me the
name of the doctor?’

‘Look, I’m afraid there
is no way you can talk to Doctor Pryce,’ said Dr Menezies. ‘My colleague died
last week. The funeral was yesterday.’

One

SHE WAS GONE WHEN WE GOT TO THE HOUSE, AND
I KNEW a dreadful instant of panic, certain that she had never been real, that
I had imagined her, and that like the snow-child, she had simply dissolved into
air and water at the first rays of the sun. Mrs Brown was out, and I remember
calling through the house, every room throwing back the sound of her absence in
my face, every breath a new emptiness. I must have been more ill than I
thought, for my head raged with fever, but none of that registered. All I could
think was, she was gone. She was gone, and the one person I could trust with my
mystery, my only friend, the only one who could understand, was looking at me
with a mischievous expression, as if he did not believe me.