Kitabı oku: «Hiding From the Light», sayfa 4
7
Emma remembered Mark’s final words as she drew up outside the cottage and switched off the car engine. Dozing in the sun behind its curtain of roses it was pink-washed with black beams. Half the roof was thatched, the other half roofed in old lichen-covered tiles and it stood sideways to the lane at its junction with a smaller, narrower road heading off into the country, set well back behind a wall of overgrown garden. She climbed out of the car and for a moment stood still, just staring. It was enchanting.
The gate was broken, the once-black paint peeling off in brittle flakes, looking too frail to touch. She was reaching out to push it open when she became conscious suddenly that someone was watching her. She turned round. A young woman was standing a hundred yards away holding a bicycle, staring at Emma with undisguised hostility. As she saw Emma spot her, she climbed onto the bike and pedalled off. Emma shrugged and turned back to the gate. If someone else had wanted to buy the cottage they presumably had had time by now to do something about it. So why should they resent someone looking at the place? Cautiously pushing the gate back on its hinges she let herself into the garden. The flowerbeds were alive with bees and butterflies, a mosaic of bright scented colour. It was the cottage of her childhood memories, her fantasies, of the dream she only hazily recalled. The woman in the lane was already forgotten. Taking a step forward, she stopped again. It was strange. Although as far as she knew she had never set foot inside the gate, she did seem to know it all so well. She knew where each flowerbed lay, beneath the tangle of untended shrubs and weeds, she knew where the pump handle was, to the side of the front door, she remembered the medlar tree and the mulberry and the blackthorn and the pear in the hedge, the apples in the back garden and the circular beds separated with large round lumps of stone and flint.
Shaking her head she sniffed and she realised suddenly to her astonishment that she was crying. Brushing her cheek with the back of her hand she took a few slow paces towards the door. Only then did she realise that she had been so eager to climb out of the car and look at the house that she had left the keys on the passenger seat. Retracing her steps, she found them. There were six on the bunch. Two front door keys, a back door key and three shed keys. Selecting the most likely with a shaking hand, she inserted it into the lock. It clicked back easily and she found herself pushing the door open. But she already knew, without having set foot inside, that she was going to buy this house, whatever the cost, financially or emotionally. She couldn’t live without it.
In the excitement of the moment she did not give Piers a thought.
The hall was dark. It smelled of rich, sun-warmed wood and dust. She stepped over the pile of circulars and junk mail on the mat and stood, holding her breath.
Welcome home, Emma.
The voice in her head was quiet, but clear. The same voice that she had heard in the shop, surely, but this time it wasn’t frightening. It was warm. Enticing. It enfolded her.
She smiled and took a step forward.
I have waited a long time for you to come, my dear.
She frowned. And in spite of herself she shivered. It was her imagination, of course it was, but just for a moment it sounded as though the voice came from outside herself. She glanced round nervously. It was Mark and Colin’s fault, with all their talk of ghosts. How silly. There was no one there. No one at all.
This is your house now, Emma. Yours and mine. We’re going to live here together, Emma. You’ll be happy here, Emma.
The voice was inside her head again, almost as though it were part of her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the voice had gone.
‘Is there anyone there?’
Of course there wasn’t. How could there be? She was just being foolish.
There were two downstairs living rooms and a largish kitchen, all heavily beamed. The narrow oak staircase led up from the hall to a landing off which there were three bedrooms, one of which, overlooking the front garden and the lane, was by far the nicest and instantly ear-marked by Emma as her own, and a small bathroom which looked as though it had last been modernised forty years ago. The whole place was dusty and shabby, but it exuded a wonderful feeling of peace and happiness. Upstairs the rooms smelled of flowers. It felt like home.
It is home, Emma!
Again, the strange voice in her head. Seductive. Gentle. Insistent. Her friend.
‘It is, isn’t it!’ Emma smiled as she discovered she had spoken out loud. ‘You’re right, whoever you are. This is home!’
She spent the whole afternoon at the cottage wandering round, sitting in first one room then another, exploring the garden, poking around in the outbuildings, totally and completely happy. The gardens were, if she were completely honest with herself, all that she had ever wanted without even knowing that she harboured any such longing at all: sprawling, untidy, packed with flowers and herbs, begging for someone to come and work on them and love them and coax them back into shape. As she stood at the rear of the cottage, surveying the scene, she could feel every fibre of her being aching to get to work, to plunge her hands into the soil, to pick the few remaining roses and bury her face in the soft damask petals. This place had been a nursery. It had been a business. It would be a way of life to whoever bought it. It could be a herb nursery again. It could be a business again, under her ownership.
It was as she glanced at her watch and realised that she would have to leave to catch the agent before he closed that the panic started and the image of the young woman who had glared at her in the lane returned with full force. That woman did not want her to buy the cottage. Why?
Will Fortingale was just about to go home. His secretary had already left and he was tidying away the papers on his desk when Emma opened the door and came in. He smiled at her wearily. ‘What did you think?’
‘I love it.’ She put the keys down on the desk.
‘You do?’ His eyes brightened perceptibly. ‘Of course, it’s been empty for a long time. It needs a lot doing to it. The last owner ran the nursery but they didn’t live in the house. They’ve got a place up in Bradfield. I think they let the house from time to time to holiday makers, but otherwise it’s been empty as you probably realised.’ He paused, sizing her up with a quick glance from beneath his eyelashes. Re-assessing her. Well-heeled, but no fool. ‘They would probably take a lower offer. It’s been on the market a while.’
‘Who was Liza?’
He was taken aback by the question. ‘I’ve no idea. Some old biddy who lived there, I suppose. The Simpsons might know. That’s the current owners.’ He glanced at his watch, torn between wanting to hang on to a potential customer and wanting to lock up and go home.
Emma smiled at him anxiously. ‘I’m prepared to put in an offer. Today. Now. You said no one else is interested? But I saw a woman up there watching me.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, still embroiled in her inner turmoil. Her hands were shaking. This was madness but she could feel waves of real panic constricting her chest.
Will Fortingale laughed. ‘Probably a nosy neighbour. To be honest no one has been up there to look for a couple of weeks. There was a flurry of interest after the ad in Country Life, but that fizzled out.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s got too much land for a weekend cottage and not enough for a viable business.’ Glancing at her, he raised an eyebrow. ‘I presume you want it for the former?’
‘No.’ Emma spoke without thinking. ‘I’d live there permanently –’ She stopped abruptly. That was nonsense. Complete nonsense. How could she live there? Of course it would be a weekend cottage. If that.
She found herself groping for one of the chairs in front of Will’s desk. Sitting down, she rubbed her face with her hands. Piers would never agree. She couldn’t do this. Not without talking to him. It was madness. Complete madness.
‘Are you all right?’ Will was watching her carefully. He had recognised some of her feelings at once; he’d seen it all before. The falling in love with a house, the longing, the day-dream-could-happen syndrome. Sitting there opposite him she was within seconds of making some fantasy come true. Usually people hesitated at this point, back-pedalled a bit, played for time. Either they would offer a sum so ludicrously low that there was no chance of it being accepted and their face would be saved, or they would disappear without trace – the dream confronted, acknowledged and rejected as impractical.
He walked round to the front of the desk. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ Her face was pasty and white.
She nodded, clenching her hands together and waited as he disappeared into the cupboard at the back of the office which served as a kitchenette and reappeared with a glass and some bottled water.
She drank it greedily and put the empty glass down on his desk. The voice in her head had returned, no longer seductive. This time it was insistent.
You’ve got to buy it, Emma. You’ve got to. We’ve waited too long for this chance. Buy it, Emma!
She took a deep breath. ‘I have to have it. I can’t explain it. It’s completely stupid.’ The anguish in her voice was real. What about her job? She loved her job. But did she really enjoy working in the City? Was that going to be her whole life, forever? Until she retired? Was that what she really wanted? Had that voice been her inner self speaking? An inner self who wanted to opt out, to return to that golden time when she was a child, before her father died, when life was full of certainty.
And what about Piers?
She looked near to tears and in spite of himself Will bit his lip in sympathy. ‘Why not sleep on it, Miss Dickson? No one else has made an offer.’ There he was again, telling her! What was the matter with him? ‘You could safely take a day or two to think about it. Maybe go and see it again? Maybe bring someone for a second opinion?’ He paused. He did quite badly want her out of the office, he realised suddenly. She was making him feel extremely uncomfortable. Anxiety – even fear – was coming off her in waves.
She was sitting with her eyes shut and for a moment he didn’t think she had heard him until he realised that she was staring at him again. ‘What sort of offer will they accept?’
He hesitated, toying with the idea of inflating the price, but something made him hold back. He shook his head remorsefully. ‘They’d accept fifty K under the asking price. To get rid of it quickly.’
‘All right.’ Her voice was tightly controlled. ‘I’ll go for it.’ She could afford it. She had her savings and her father’s trust money and he would have approved of this, she was sure of it. He had always been an enthusiast.
‘But you’ll want a survey?’ Will couldn’t cope with this spontaneity. It didn’t fit the norm.
‘No.’ Shaking her head she stood up. She went and stood by the window, gazing out into the street. The empty shop across the road where she had passed her unexpected coffee break that morning was deserted, the front door padlocked. She turned back to Will. ‘Ring them. Now. Check they’ll accept it.’ Her knuckles were white on the edge of his desk. ‘And a deposit. They’ll want a deposit –’
‘Not before Monday, Miss Dickson.’ Will found himself seriously worried now. ‘Honestly. If you want it, it’s yours.’ He reached into the file to find the phone number. Glancing up, he indicated the chair. ‘Please, sit down again while I phone them.’ He smiled at her. ‘Relax. I’m sure there won’t be a problem.’
8
Saturday lunchtime
‘I suggest we do the interviews upstairs.’ Colin, having taken the tray back to the coffee shop, was adjusting the lens on his camera. ‘The wall up there would be a good background. The herringbone brickwork or whatever it is.’
Joe Thomson, their sound man, had joined them at lunchtime with his daughter Alice who was going to act as production assistant. Joe at forty-two was balding, very tall and thin. His daughter had inherited his height and build. At eighteen she was already as tall as her father. With short cropped hair and studs in eyebrows and nose she appeared far more confident and outgoing than in fact she was. This was her first assignment – a gap job before going up to university. Half of her was determined she would not blow it. The other half was scared stiff.
Colin and Mark had been in Manningtree for two days now, staying at a bed and breakfast in Brook Street, and Joe and Alice had joined them after driving down from London. The first day had been wasted for Colin and Mark when the expected key had not been forthcoming and Stan Barker, the owner, had proved extraordinarily elusive. They had only run him to earth that first evening at the pub, so their first visit to the shop had been perhaps appropriately after dark. The atmosphere had been suitably sinister.
After the visit Mark had slept uneasily and woken early. The second night he had been shocked awake by the sound of someone screaming. Splashing his face in cold water he had stood for several minutes in the bathroom of the bed and breakfast, staring into the mirror before he had tiptoed back to his bedroom. The sound had been part of his dream, he knew that. And yet, somehow it had come from outside him. He climbed back into bed and sat there, with the table light on, huddled beneath the bedcovers fighting sleep. When at last he had dozed off he dreamed he was running down a dark road and there were people chasing him. He could hear them shouting, baying like hounds and growing closer all the time. He was still running, out of breath and drenched in sweat, when his alarm clock woke him.
Mark glanced up at the others from the clipboard. ‘I’m going to want the interviews in different settings. Perhaps some outside by the river, or some of the other places associated with Hopkins. Unless the ghosts appear there’s basically not much to see here. An empty shop. An empty upstairs. But I’d like to get some shots of that staircase if we can light it properly. I’ve got three interviews set up for this afternoon, Joe. Barker first. I’m easy where he goes, wherever he feels most comfortable, then we can fit the others round him.’
‘You don’t think he’ll back out at the last moment?’ Colin hefted the camera up onto the counter.
‘He seemed quite keen.’ Mark flipped over the page and made a quick pencil note on his schedule. ‘I had a moment of inspiration and told him programmes like this lead to dozens of people trying to buy a property after it’s appeared on TV.’
‘Not necessarily after a programme like this one!’ Colin commented dryly.
‘No, well you never know!’ Mark glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s go up and see where it would be best to put him.’
He led the way up the creaking staircase. At the top he stopped, looking into the large upper room. He frowned. Something in there had changed from when he had been in there earlier.
‘Problem?’ Colin was immediately behind him, Joe and Alice at the rear.
‘No.’ Mark walked into the room. The last person up here had been Emma. She had seen something. Felt the atmosphere. He stared round thoughtfully. ‘Feel anything?’
‘Apart from cold?’ The others had trooped in behind him. Colin shivered.
‘Cold is a start. This is August.’
Colin strode over to the window and glanced down into the street. The window sill was level with his knees and he had to stoop to see out of it. ‘We expected bad vibes. What would a haunted house be without them?’ Hunkering down he reached for the window latch and pushed the small casement open. ‘The room just needs a bit of fresh air. This place has horrendous rising damp and probably dry rot and death-watch beetle and every other scourge that old buildings are heir to. Any of that would be enough to put off a buyer, you know.’ He stood up and faced the others. ‘Mark?’
Mark was staring at the brick wall. ‘I saw something move. There. In front of the wall.’ His face had gone white.
They all followed the pointing finger and looked hard at the bricks. The temperature in the room had plummeted. For a moment they stood in total silence, no one daring to move. The traffic noise from the High Street had ceased and the quiet was unnaturally claustrophobic.
‘Can’t see anything. Shall I go down for the camera?’ Colin said quietly. He glanced at Alice. She was gazing at the wall with a slight frown on her face. If she was scared she was hiding it well.
‘No.’ Mark stepped over beside him. ‘No, it’s gone, whatever it was.’
Outside a car hooted.
‘Probably a spider,’ Joe put in firmly. He rearranged his lanky frame, folding his arms nonchalantly.
‘Probably.’ Turning, Mark stared out of the window, taking a deep breath of the air flooding into the room. A strong smell of traffic fumes rose from the street below, where cars paused to pass each other in the narrow thoroughfare. Suddenly the room felt marginally warmer.
The interview took only twenty minutes from beginning to end. They could tell it was going to be a disaster from the moment Stan Barker walked into the shop.
‘I’m not going upstairs.’ He stood, uncomfortable in his best suit, just inside the door.
Colin eyed the florid face, the too-tight collar, the jazzy tie, and glanced at Mark with a raised eyebrow.
Mark gave a barely perceptible shrug. ‘Perhaps you could stand there, at the bottom of the stairs? I just want to ask you a few questions then we’re going to do some shots of the shop itself.’
As interviewer-cum-presenter he was going to remain out of shot. If necessary he could get Colin to insert one or two angles of himself later. They always took a few interviewer shots in case.
‘So, Mr Barker, how long have your family owned number one Church Street?’
Colin, with the camera, had positioned himself beside him; Joe had pinned a mike to Stan’s tie. Stan had the look of a man facing a firing squad.
‘My grandfather bought it just after the war.’ He hesitated. ‘The old house was split into two and turned into shops about the turn of the century, I reckon. The lad as owned this half never come back. His wife wanted shot of the place so it was going for a good price.’
‘And what kind of a shop was it then?’
Mark’s question seemed to floor him. He hesitated, then he shrugged. ‘Butcher. He was a butcher, my granda.’
They were going to have to extricate every word. It was like drawing teeth.
‘And what happened next?’
‘He weren’t well, so he suggested my dad took it over. Well, he didn’t want to be a butcher so he said no. They got a man in to manage it. Old Fred Arrow. He only lasted a year.’
Silence. Stan’s eyes were riveted to the microphone baffle on top of the camcorder.
‘And what happened then?’ Mark prompted quietly. Colin moved smoothly to one side, stepping over the trailing cable, changing the angle.
‘He said he weren’t going to stay another day in the place. Hated it, he did. Said it were haunted. He said he saw Dave Pegram – that’s the lad as was killed in the war – standing on the stairs …’ He broke off and the look he shot over his own shoulder was one of pure terror. Colin smiled. Yes!
‘Well, he went and so did the next chap and then another butcher opened up down the street and Da thought he’d pack it in. So he tried to sell the place. No one was interested. Not as a butcher’s. Then a woman came along in about 1950. She wanted to run it as a bakery. Fancy cakes and things she sold. She lasted a year – maybe a bit longer, but then she saw Dave as well –’
‘When you say she saw Dave,’ Mark interrupted smoothly, ‘would she have recognised him?’
‘No.’ Stan shook his head vigorously. ‘She weren’t local. She’d never met him.’
‘But she described him?’
Stan shrugged. ‘On the stairs, she said. And upstairs. She had a flat up there, above the shop. There were three rooms in them days and then there’s an attic, too. She said he used to walk up and down all night. She’d lie there listening and she could hear him pacing up and down. You might well shiver, young lady!’ He addressed Alice suddenly who, dressed in jeans and a skimpy T-shirt had hugged herself with a shudder as she stood nearby with Mark’s clipboard clasped importantly to her chest. The goose-pimples on her arms were clearly visible.
Mark sighed. It didn’t matter. They could cut that bit.
‘I take it she checked there was no one there?’
‘She wouldn’t go up there. She left. Halfway through the lease, she upped and left. After that there was a whole load of different people. Dress shop. Hardware. Another baker. Bikes. A little tea shop once. None of them stayed.’
‘And I understand you asked for the shop to be exorcised?’
Stan looked uncomfortable. ‘Stupid business. But nobody would take it on after my Da died, so I got the old rector up here. We reckoned if Dave had never had a proper burial wherever he died, poor bastard, perhaps a few prayers and that would sort him out.’
‘And did it?’
The camera moved closer, focusing on Stan’s face.
He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t Dave, was it. We’d said the prayers for the wrong bloke. His son turned up in the town one day to see where ’is dad had lived. Turned out he hadn’t died at all – or not till years later! He’d gone to Canada with someone else’s missus!’
A snort of laughter from Alice broke the tension abruptly. Joe and Colin both glared at her. Mark continued soberly: ‘So, what happened after that?’
‘Well, we thought maybe the prayers would work anyway, but the noises got worse.’ Stan looked down suddenly as though afraid to stare any longer into the camera lens. ‘Much worse.’
Mark found his mouth had gone dry. The question he was about to ask died on his lips. There was a long silence. Colin glanced at him with a frown. He stopped filming. ‘That’s great. Do you want any more, Mark?’
Mark fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and mopped his face with it. ‘Yeah. I do. We need to come up to the present. Why you’re trying to sell it again now.’
Stan shrugged. He shifted uncomfortably as Joe moved in to adjust the microphone clip and Colin started filming again. ‘There’s always noises. People walking up and down.’
‘And at what point,’ Mark took a deep breath, ‘did you decide that the house was haunted by Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General?’
Stan stared round wildly. For a moment Mark thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he turned back to the camera and speaking fast and confidentially he started on an explanation which sounded, Mark thought suddenly, just a bit too rehearsed.
‘Him – the Witchfinder – he’s been seen in all sorts of places in the town. And they’ve seen him up at Hopping Bridge and at the Thorn at Mistley. That’s named after him, you know. The Hopping Bridge. So, why not here, too? The worst place is in the Indian across the road. Used to be the Guildhall or some such, that little place where they tried them. The witches. Well, I thought to myself, supposing it’s him here. And it was.’ He stopped almost triumphantly.
‘How do you know it was him?’ Mark glanced down at Joe, who had resumed his position slightly behind him, on one knee, second microphone in hand. Joe raised an eyebrow.
‘’Coz I do. I seen ’im.’
Mark wasn’t sure whether the shifty look in the man’s eyes was because he was lying or because he was afraid to admit the sighting.
‘Can you describe him for us?’
‘Tall. Wearing large boots. A pointy sort of hat. And a goatee beard. Everyone as sees ’im says he’s got a goatee beard.’
‘And he was here in this house?’
‘On the stairs. Right behind where I’m standing.’
He turned and they all followed his gaze to the point where the uneven oak risers disappeared around the corner. As Colin focused in carefully and panned the camera across the breadth of the stairs, Alice gave a small whimper.
Mark persevered. ‘And was there a historical connection between Matthew Hopkins and this building?’
‘He walked the witches here.’ Stan folded his arms defiantly. ‘Up and down. All night. Didn’t let them sleep. In the end they was so muddled they didn’t know what they was saying. He’d get a confession out of them, then they’d be packed off to the dungeons in Colchester Castle.’
‘What a bastard!’ Alice’s voice was shrill.
‘Cut!’ Mark brought his hand down sharply in a chopping motion. ‘Alice, one more interruption and you’re going home!’
Joe turned to his daughter with a frown. ‘Get a grip, Alice. You knew what this job was. Groovy, I believe you said!’
Alice shuffled across to the counter. She was scowling. ‘Sorry.’
Mark looked back at Stan. ‘So, having decided the building was haunted by Cromwell’s witchfinder, you decided to cut your losses and sell it. But no one wants to buy, is that right?’
Stan nodded gloomily. ‘Trouble is, the place is falling down. It needs all sorts of repairs. The roof leaks.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t afford to keep it on. Don’t want it. No way. And I need the money. I thought people would like a haunted house. Someone told me there was a market for such like. But, no one has gone for it yet.’
Joe glanced at Mark and winked. So, they had finally got there. The old bugger was making it up. He thought he’d get a better price for the shop if it had a famous ghost. Mark hid his irritation. This wouldn’t do a lot for the credibility of the programme.
‘Thanks, Stan. I think that’s all we need for now.’
‘Right.’ Stan moved away from the stairs with alacrity. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Just you remember I want you out of here by tomorrow. There’s a new tenant moving in Monday.’
‘Stan!’ Mark called suddenly as the old man moved towards the door. ‘What about the other part of the house. The shop next door. Isn’t that haunted, too?’
Stan shrugged. ‘Never heard that it was. They only walked the witches here, see.’ He jerked his thumb towards the stairs. ‘Never took them to the nicer side of the house. That’s where the family lived. Couldn’t hear them scream from that side of the house!’
There was a long silence after he had gone.
Colin eased the heavy camera off his shoulder and put it down with a groan as Alice closed the door behind their interviewee and stood watching him walk out of sight.
‘Christ, only one more day! I thought we’d got a week at least,’ Mark complained as Joe began to coil up his cables. ‘He told me it’s going to be an end-of-line discount shop, this and that, probably most of it fallen off the backs of lorries – just till Christmas. You’d think they could give us a bit longer.’
‘We can do it.’ Colin retrieved the clipboard from Alice. ‘If we spend the whole day at it tomorrow – and there’s always tonight, of course.’ He grinned at her. ‘After all, ghosts appear at night, don’t they?’ He sighed. ‘I was more worried about his remarks about ghosts being a selling point. What do you think? Have we wasted the whole afternoon? If he’s made all this up, the programme has gone. Damn! If he hadn’t said that!’
‘We’ll cut that bit,’ Joe said. He was lighting up a cigarette.
Mark shook his head slowly. ‘We’d still know he’d said it.’
‘I think he’s telling the truth.’ Alice hauled herself up onto the counter and sat, swinging her legs. ‘That last bit was awful – how they couldn’t hear them scream in the other half of the house.’
Mark shrugged. He was inclined to agree with Alice. ‘The trouble is, he’s after a quick sale. But perhaps it’s backfired on him a bit. People like ghosts, but not these particular ghosts. Not to live with. I’m afraid the shop’s history, if it’s true, will put purchasers off. Still,’ he paused and gave a wry grin, ‘I suppose when one thinks about it, for our purposes, it could add credibility to the film.’ He walked across to Alice. ‘Let’s see the interview list. We’ve got two more today. Out and about. I wonder if we should reschedule them and concentrate on this place for now. There’s a couple more tomorrow. That’s fine. We can do atmosphere here. Then we want corroboration and a few shots of Colchester Castle and its dungeons – you checked for permissions for that, Alice? Good. Then that should about do it. Nice piece. OK, folks. Let’s get some film in, of the attic and the first floor. The shadows are moving round a bit now. It’ll look a bit more spooky. That’s what Emma called it. Spooky. And that was unprompted.’ He smiled at the recollection. ‘Then we can get some street shots. OK?’
As they busied themselves collecting camera, lights and clipboard a shadow appeared on the staircase by the newel post in the corner where the dusty oak steps disappeared out of sight. Alice glanced round sharply. But it had gone almost as soon as it had appeared.
None of them noticed the sound of footsteps on the dirty boards upstairs.
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