The Immaculate (26 page)

“Didn't you hear my message?”

“Yes, and I rushed back, hoping you'd ring, but you didn't.”

“Yes, I did, but there was no answer.”

“You didn't.”

“I
did,
Gail. You must have been out or asleep or something.”

“What time did you ring?”

“I don't know—about half-ten.”

“I was definitely in at half-ten, and I wasn't asleep. I was watching
Celebrity Wife Swap.
”

“I thought you hated that programme?”

“I do, but I couldn't concentrate on anything else because I thought you were going to ring.”

This discussion was going round in circles. Suddenly Jack grinned. It was great to hear Gail's voice, even if they (or rather he) had got the conversation off on the wrong foot.

“Gail,” he said.

“What?” she snapped. For some reason Jack imagined her with hair newly washed, feet tucked under her on the settee, wearing her white towelling dressing gown, scowling.

“I love you,” he said.

“Well, I don't love you. You're a pain in the arse.”

“I know, I'm sorry. I've been wanting to speak to you, that's all, and it's so bloody frustrating when no one answers the phone.”

“Well, that's not my fault, is it? You must have been dialing the wrong number or something.”

Jack's initial irritation had fully evaporated now. He was prepared to concede anything. “Yeah,” he said. “That must have been it. Let's not talk about it any more. It doesn't really matter.”

“Say sorry,” murmured Gail.

“What for?”

“For being a pig.”

“But I've already said sorry once.”

“Say it again.”

Jack concealed a sigh. “Okay, I'm sorry. I humbly beg your apologies. Can we be friends now?”

“S'pose so.”

“Good,” he said. “Do you love me again now?”

“S'pose so.”

“Good. So what have you been doing?”

“I told you—working and running round after you. Why didn't you leave your number when you left your message? Then I could have rung you back.”

“I was in a pub.”

“But you still could have left the number of where you're staying.”

“Yes, I suppose I could. I didn't think.”

“You never do.”

“True. So how's London?”

“Same as ever. Dirty, smelly, noisy, crowded.”

“I thought you liked London.”

“I like it better when you're here.”

“Shucks, thanks. I'm really missing you.”

“You only saw me yesterday morning.”

“I know, but time goes about ten times slower here. It's already Friday.”

“So how's it been so far? As bad as you thought it was going to be?”

“Worse. I've been chased by a motorbike gang led by none other than Patty Bates' daughter, and I think I'm being haunted by my father's ghost.”

“His ghost? What do you mean, Jack? Is that a joke?”

“I wish it was. The truth is, I don't know what to be more worried about: getting my head mashed in by the bikers, or the fact that my phantom father might pop up again at any moment.”

“Oh, Jack. I wish I was there with you. I'd protect you from the hooded claw.”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling.

“Where are you staying?” she asked. “In that hotel you were on about?”

“No, it was full. I'm actually staying at the house.”

“Your father's house?”

“Yeah.”

“But isn't that in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Oh, Jack,” Gail said again and gave a big sigh. “Shit, I'm really worried now. I wish you hadn't told me all these things.”

“Sorry. But look, it'll be okay. I've only got to brazen it out for a couple more days.”

She sighed again. “So what happened with this motorbike gang? They didn't hurt you, did they?”

He told her all that had happened in Beckford, from the moment he first pulled up in front of his aunt's house to seeing his father laid out in his coffin that afternoon.

“Oh, Jack,” she said softly. It was becoming her stock phrase.

“Yeah,” he said ruefully. He half-wished now that he hadn't told her anything. She would only fret and there wasn't exactly a great deal she could do.

“I wish I was there with you,” she said again. “I'm thinking of you, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I'm thinking of you, too. All the time.”

A small silence fell between them. The phone line hissed. Jack had never been a great fan of the telephone as a means of communication. It was useful for exchanging information quickly over long distances, but when it came to the conveyance of emotion, it was grossly inadequate. In times like these you needed to touch, to kiss, you needed small silences, but what would have been intimate in the flesh was reduced to awkwardness when squeezed through the medium of the telephone.

“Anyway,” Jack said eventually, making his voice bright, “how's school been this week? And have I had any good post?”

They exchanged trivialities for a few minutes, each having little left to say but reluctant to let the other go. At last Gail said, “Ah well, I'd better make myself something to eat. If anything else happens, though, Jack, you ring me straight away. I'll be in all night.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, course.”

“Okay then. Bye.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“You too.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

There was a click and the line went dead. Jack sighed and replaced the receiver. Well, that's my socialising over for the evening, he thought. He could always have gone to a pub (though definitely not the Seven Stars), but after last night he didn't fancy it. No, he'd grab himself something to eat and do some work. Maybe have a whiskey or two later to help him sleep. He wondered if that was how his father had started; perhaps drinking had been the only way he'd been able to find sleep after Jack's mother's death. The parallel discomforted him. Maybe he'd do without the whiskey. Perhaps straining his brain over his novel for a few hours would be enough to tire him out.

He made himself some tuna sandwiches and carried them through to the sitting room. A fire was blazing in the grate. The curtains were drawn despite the fact that blades of daylight in the twilight sky were thinning only slowly. He put on his CD of didgeridoo music, decided it was too creepy and replaced it with Ennio Morricone. He read through his notes on the settee as he ate his sandwiches, then relocated to the laptop. He smoked as he paused between sentences; most of the time the cigarettes burned themselves slowly out in the ashtray. normally when writing, Jack was aware of what time it was and how many words he'd written, he became distracted by the slightest sound, he jumped up and roamed around the room, as though searching for inspiration. But on this occasion he became completely, utterly engrossed. A hole opened in the page and he fell through it, right into his make-believe world.

Eventually the words petered out, broke up like a dream, and he came to, yawning and stretching. The house was silent, the music having finished long ago. The fire was barely flickering in the grate. Shadows clustered in niches like clumps of the greater darkness outside. Jack stood up, walked across the room and switched on the second lamp. He goaded the fire into grumpy life and fed it with fresh coal. He flipped through his CDs until he found U2's
The Joshua Tree
and put that on, nodding in satisfaction as the music obliterated a wind whose voice had sounded to Jack as if it were trying to form words. He looked at his watch—11:22. God, was it really that time? When he scrolled back through what he'd written he was astonished to discover he'd completed seven pages, around eighteen hundred words.

He decided to go to bed; he certainly felt tired enough to sleep. He placed the guard over the fire, switched off his CD player and exited the room. He was normally meticulous, even a little obsessive, when it came to switching things off and pulling out plugs, but he left the twin lamps on as a guard not only against the darkness but whatever walked in it.

He felt nervous as he ascended the stairs, the memory of last night still clear in his mind. However, the house was silent apart from the low moaning of the wind outside. He crossed the floor of his bedroom quickly and jerked the curtains closed. No sense allowing a bush or a tree, or the shadow of one, to set his imagination racing.

Into the bathroom, brush teeth, take a pee. He hurried out of the bathroom, pulling the light cord as he went. The click of the light preceded a sound that made him catch his breath, caused his heart to pause, and then quicken.

It came from above his head, from the attic, and sounded like mice scurrying across a wooden floor or perhaps the frenziedly beating wings of a trapped bird. Jack swallowed, stared up at the square wooden panel in the ceiling. That's all it is, he tried to assure himself. Just mice, nothing to worry about. He considered ignoring it, going to bed, and then he remembered his vow that morning in the woods. Hadn't he resolved to confront whatever sights and sounds he might encounter? And this wasn't half as bad as the slow march of footsteps above his head, the rasping voice on the phone. The scurrying came again, more agitated this time. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. He clumped downstairs, deliberately making as much noise as he could, and stomped into the kitchen.

He pulled on the light and opened the pantry door, making the ancient hinges crunch. The pantry smelled good, like fresh warm peaches, though there wasn't a peach in sight. At the back was a stepladder. Jack dragged it out and hauled it upstairs, breathing hard with effort. He set the ladder beneath the attic entrance. “Right,” he said, “here I come, ready or not.”

He climbed the stepladder and reached with both hands to lift the square of wood up and over to the side. He paused for one brief, tottering moment; a scene from a film had crept unbidden into his mind. A girl follows the sound of a cat upstairs to the attic. She lifts the attic entrance as Jack is about to do, sticks her head through the gap, turns . . . and opens her mouth to scream as the psycho who is waiting for her swings a huge hook down on a chain. Before her scream can emerge the hook pierces her throat and continues its momentum along the chain, whipping the girl up through the attic entrance like a rag doll.

Jack closed his eyes and let out a quick breath, like a weight lifter preparing to lift. The scuttling sounds were continuing, like a lure. Bracing himself, he lifted the square of wood. Dust sifted down on to his face, pricking his eyes.

The noise stopped suddenly, as though switched off. Jack lifted the square of wood over to the side and released it, gritting his teeth as it scraped and thudded, the sound generating a dry echo of itself. He rubbed the dust out of his eyes and suppressed an urge to sneeze. Beneath him the stepladder creaked ominously. Gripping both sides of the attic entrance, Jack hauled himself up. The hook swung down . . .

But only in his imagination.

The reality was far more mundane. Gloom, dust motes that drifted through musty air like silt through pond water, mouse droppings, a few sticks of furniture, cobwebs, an old chest.

Puffing with effort, he dragged himself over the lip of the entrance so that his feet dangled out of the gap in the landing ceiling. He sneezed once, twice, and then a third time. His eyes itched, his throat felt sore. Above him lengths of timber formed an arch: the roof's skeleton. He looked around, squinting, but there was nothing else to see, no indication of what had made the sounds he had heard. Perhaps it had been something actually on the roof; maybe there was a nest up there. He saw a spider that would have filled his palm scaling one of the joists like an eight-legged mountaineer. Insects couldn't make that much noise, could they? He shook his head. Not unless they were wearing hob-nailed boots or had grown to the size of cats.

The chest intrigued Jack. He couldn't remember ever having seen it before. He felt a sudden delicious thrill of anticipation, which reminded him oddly of the joy he had gleaned from books as a child. That joy had been absolute, like losing himself in the best possible magic. It had been a reaction against the misery of the rest of his childhood, which was why he found it difficult to recapture that emotion now, except transitorily. He wondered what was in the chest. It looked like the sort of thing that would contain gold doubloons, pirate's treasure. And where had it come from? It was so old it seemed made from age, from the dry, sad substance of the passing years, from memories long perished, forgotten dreams.

Jack pulled in his legs and scrambled over to the chest, trying not to rouse too much of the thick dust to life. The dust on top of the chest was like grey sticky wool, though there were clear smudged spaces around the locks, indicating that though the chest had obviously stood here for some considerable time—perhaps for years—it had been opened and closed frequently. He touched the metal locks almost with reverence. They were cold and freckled with rust. He wanted to see what was inside, but at the same time was reluctant to do so for fear of breaking some spell. He smiled, took a deep breath, and then, heart quickening, pushed the catches aside with his thumbs.

The locks clicked up like small blades. Jack slid his fingers under the rim of the lid and heaved the chest open. More dust flurried, causing him to squint. He saw the gleam of glass.

Pictures. Paintings. There was a layer of them inside the chest laid frame to frame, and more underneath. Jack's initial feeling was one of disappointment: was this
all?
He lifted a couple of the paintings and held them up, catching what little light there was on the glass. They were rugged Yorkshire landscapes, watercolours, lots of greens and browns and greys. They were nice but uninspired. He peered at the black scrawled signature in the bottom right-hand corner of one of them: Alice Stone. He almost dropped the painting, shocked. This was his mother's! His mother had painted this! Jack had no idea she had been keen on art. As though realising it for the first time, Jack felt suddenly dismayed that he knew next to nothing about her.