A Kind of Vanishing (34 page)

He told her that soon the tide would come in and the old ship they had passed, with its hull stuck deep in the shingle, would vanish because water would pour in through the portholes and engulf it. He said they were getting out just in time. Alice hoped that Eleanor hadn’t chosen to hide inside and this made her enquire:

‘What about Eleanor?’ She was worried. It was wonderful to be free of playing daft games, but even Doctor Ramsay had said the Tide Mills was dangerous and so although Eleanor could swim in pyjamas she might not be safe.

‘Oh, she’ll be fine. It’s you I’m concerned about.’ He let go of her hand for a moment to stroke the back of her neck. His fingers were warm and they tickled up and down the way the nice post office lady’s did. Her Dad would have been rougher. Once again, Alice unconsciously compared her parents with the Ramsays and was frustrated with her Mum and Dad for falling far short of them.

They reached the steep mountain of rocks at the far end of the beach and Alice was dismayed at the prospect of climbing them. Jagged boulders with sharp corners and few places to hold on to piled high against the sky. Doctor Ramsay would expect her to be as nimble as his daughter. Her mouth was parched and the hot sun pressed down on her head, burning the back of her neck where his hand had been.

‘This is where I carry you. Let yourself go limp.’

Doctor Ramsay came towards her and, putting his hands underneath her armpits and clasping her tightly, he hoisted Alice up easily into the air like a rag doll. She hung over his shoulder, her head dangling downwards, her arms swinging, nervous of touching him. She could only think of her skirt riding up and blush at the awkwardness of being so close to him as his hand gripped her thigh.

‘Hold on to me, it’ll be easier then,’ he gasped.

Alice dared to place her arms around his neck and then to clasp his hips with her knees. She began to relax as it became clear that he wouldn’t drop her on to the rocks and let her get hurt. He jumped quickly and easily back and forth as he found a way up that wasn’t obvious from the beach. When they got near to the top she dared to lift her head and look around.

In the distance, on the bushy hillside that led to the Tide Mills, just where there was a chalky ridge that dropped to the beach, she was sure she saw a figure. It was hard to focus and the person melted into the background when she tried to make it out.

‘Don’t move, we’ll lose balance,’ Doctor Ramsay gasped.

She held him tighter. If the movement on the hill had been Eleanor watching, then this was Alice’s moment of triumph.

Once they were on the other side of the rocks, he lowered Alice down with great care, making sure that her skirt was straight and that her hair was spread out around her shoulders.

‘Not far now. But we must make sure no one sees us, so be ready to hide if I tell you and keep very, very quiet.’ Alice was overjoyed. This game, although similar to most of Eleanor’s as it involved spies and hiding, was much more fun.

They made their way along a track beside the flint wall that marked the northern boundary of the Tide Mills village and was parallel to the railway line. Most of the wall had crumbled away and was only about a foot high, but in stretches it was still the original six feet, topped with rounded terracotta bricks. With the tall brambles on the other side of the track, at these points they were in a cool damp tunnel. They had to walk in single file because the foliage had encroached up on the path to the wall. Doctor Ramsay went in front and every now and then he would pause to hitch branches up, so that they didn’t flick in Alice’s face or lash her knees the way they had when she had been out with Eleanor. Her Mum was right. He was kind and thoughtful.

If the wall had been lower, they would have seen the tramp before he saw them. As it was, ducking around a tangle of branches they almost fell over him.

He was worse than in Eleanor’s descriptions of him, which at the time Alice had assumed she’d invented. He was exactly like one of Eleanor’s monsters. He was taller than Doctor Ramsay, with clothes so filthy and ragged that Alice couldn’t make out where they began or ended or what colour they had ever been. His head and face were covered in matted hair: long grey straggling strands fuzzed around his shoulders and were draped over a bald patch on his head, not like hair at all. He was blocking their path, with his flies undone, peeing against the wall. Alice had only ever seen a man doing this once before when she had accidentally gone into the toilet when her Dad was there. But he had had his back to her and they had never talked about it. The tramp was practically facing them and Alice stared at the arc of bright yellow liquid splashing against the flints and running in a rapid stream over the ground towards their feet.

‘What the Hell do you think you’re doing?’ Doctor Ramsay’s voice was no longer kind. Alice shrank back as the two men confronted each other. The tramp didn’t move until he had finished, his eyes on Alice throughout. Alice had expected him to be frightened but he started to laugh, his cracked lips curling back over blackened stumps.

‘Get out of the way, you bastard.’

When Alice’s Dad got really cross he went red, which until this minute Alice had thought was the most frightening it was possible to be. To her dismay, the tramp carried on wheezing. He turned from the wall, shaking something in his hand as he advanced on them, all the while talking in a long growl that didn’t make sense. Doctor Ramsay gave him a shove in the chest that sent him reeling against the wall and he sank in a heap into the nasty liquid puddling at their feet. He didn’t move or speak. Grasping Alice’s hand in his, Doctor Ramsay guided her past what now looked like an old Guy waiting for a bonfire. Alice noticed with relief as she stepped around him that he had stopped smiling. Soon they had left the tramp behind, and there was no one but them on the path.

‘Are you all right, Alice?’ Doctor Ramsay was irritated and not so nice.

‘Ye-es.’

‘Now we do really have to be careful that no one else sees us. We don’t want that happening again, do we?’ Alice presumed from this that the tramp had been her fault and nodded firmly. She didn’t know what else to do to make amends except to go on being herself, which he had seemed to like before.

Mark Ramsay was leading Alice back to Charbury along a route that few people had used because it went only to the White House. Because of this, it would be a couple of days before the police got round to searching it. By the time they did, the tramp had gone.

Ahead they could see the high garden wall of the White House. Then Doctor Ramsay stepped off the path and pushed his way through some bushes.

‘Come this way.’

He brought her to a rusting gate in the garden wall. It was cloaked in tangles of thick green ivy. Alice was astonished. As she came nearer, she saw that the wrought iron depicted an idyllic rural scene with all the animals of the countryside. At the base of a spreading tree she spotted a badger, and a hedgehog, while up in its branches was a tiny wren and a goldfinch. Doctor Ramsay bent down to her and made her follow very carefully the direction of his pointing finger.

‘No, up a bit, D’you see? To the right of the butterfly.’

Right at the top, looking out at the hills that formed the curve of the gate was a little man crouched over an easel.

‘He’s fixed forever painting the landscape. Look carefully. What he is painting hasn’t changed over the last two hundred years.’ Doctor Ramsay straightened up. ‘Let me show you properly.’ Very gently, making sure her dress was straight, he lifted her high up, past the level of the gate, past his shoulders so that she was looking down on to the top of his head. Then she looked beyond the gate, at the thick canopy of the trees. There was a hole not much bigger than a dinner plate through which Alice could see the downs veined with white streaks of chalk exactly like the shapes wrought into the gate. Sloping light green grass was spotted with darker green blobs for trees. Doctor Ramsay lowered Alice back to the ground.

‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ She sighed. Invested with Eleanor’s imaginative powers, Alice knew the gate was the entrance to a magic land visible only to those with the password. Doctor Ramsay’s next words proved her right:

‘This is the secret way into my garden. I have the only key.’

He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and brandished a bright silver key. Alice came closer to him as, still smiling into her eyes, he inserted it in the lock. It turned easily and the gate swung open. He ushered Alice through. They were in a small clearing, sheltered from the blazing sunlight by the tall trees growing around the edges of the garden. It was cool and damp and quiet except for the occasional echoing chirrup of a blackbird far above them. There was a rustle – a baby rabbit broke cover and hopped quickly off into the undergrowth. Alice was overjoyed; she had stepped into
Bambi
. Doctor Ramsay had transformed her life.

‘I’d like to live here for ever and ever,’ she confided to him.

‘Be as quiet as a mouse. I know you can.’ He was being nice again.

They tiptoed around the tree trunks following a zig-zag route. Beneath their feet the ground was soft. It was carpeted with pine needles, chips of bark and spongy moss all draped in snaking tendrils of ivy that had crawled around the base of the trees.

A heavy scent made Alice drowsy and filled her with a rush of optimism. She gave in to a succession of happy associations: building a snowman with her Mum and Dad; piggy backs on her Dad’s shoulders; making fairy cakes with her Mum on a cold winter afternoon. And most of all: the flower expedition with Doctor Ramsay.

Then she saw it. It was the most exquisite rose she had ever seen. A brilliant white, it reminded her of a giant snowball. Even her Dad didn’t grow such big ones. Doctor Ramsay pulled the branch with the rose down towards her and standing on her toes, Alice buried her face deep into it.

‘Boule de neige,’
he murmured in her ear.

‘Snowball,’ Alice returned promptly. She had come top in French last year. Suddenly she knew she wasn’t a bad girl after all. She closed her eyes. The rose’s petals were cool and firm on her cheeks like a cat’s ear. She filled her lungs with the insistent smell as she imagined it really was a snowball, cold and thirst quenching on this boiling hot day.

As she opened her eyes, she gasped. There were roses all around them, great nodding white flowers like beacons in the dark, secret place where Alice was positive that Eleanor had never been. Their branches intertwined with the ivy to form an impenetrable wall of foliage; untrimmed and untamed. This was a proper garden.

Alice saw where they were. Up until now, being with Doctor Ramsay had shed a different light over everything, rendering it strange and exciting. Now Alice recognised the Ramsays’ lawn, although she had never seen it from this angle before. To their right was the willow tree where she had sat through several horrible tea times, and beyond that the gate to the river where Lucian tried in vain to catch fish. The house was on their left, and now Alice could acknowledge its close resemblance to Eleanor’s dirty old doll’s house. Now that she had Doctor Ramsay, Alice could admit to herself that she was jealous of the doll’s house. She had never seen anything so magnificent. So when Eleanor had proudly explained that it was exactly the same as the real White House, Alice had assumed an air of indifference. So she had never fully appreciated that it was indeed a precise replica. Now as she stared up at the solid grand house, three floors high not including the attics above, standing proudly on a sprawling lawn, it seemed less forbidding. With Doctor Ramsay there beside her, the White House was nothing but a toy.

‘Thank you very much for bringing me to your secret place. It’s the best I’ve ever been to.’

‘Oh, this isn’t it. Just wait and see. There’s more.’

Alice gazed up at the windows. Apart from the ones on the top floor with the bars, which she knew were the playroom, all the windows were open. Then Alice saw that the middle window on the second floor was shut, with the curtains closed. Alice guessed this was Mrs Ramsay’s bedroom and assumed she must be having one of her lie-downs. As they were about to venture out across the lawn, Doctor Ramsay put his hand on Alice’s shoulder, keeping her still. Not that she would have gone anywhere without him. Lucian was running out of the back door and was struggling across the lawn hampered by all his fishing equipment. The Ramsays were always in a hurry.

Not all of them.

Lucian’s rod caught between his ankles. He tripped and fell headlong on to the grass. Alice heard him swear as he picked himself up and readjusted his knapsack and her cheeks went red. She marvelled that she could ever have wanted to marry him. His face was pink from sitting out on the riverbank in the sun all day and he had untidy hair sticking up like Eleanor’s. If she had been with him when they met the tramp he wouldn’t have saved her. Because this occurred to her, Alice resisted going over to him when he fell.

Instead, Alice crept closer to Doctor Ramsay, breathing in his lovely smelling aftershave and clean clothes mixed in with rose petals.

‘Okay, the coast’s clear.’

As they skirted the lawn, following a path made of red bricks like the ones at the Tide Mills, Alice was sure she saw the curtains of Mrs Ramsay’s window move. She didn’t want to have to be polite to Mrs Ramsay and for the game to be over so she pretended not to have seen it.

They hurried down some slippery mossy steps at the side of the house that were also new to Alice, who was beginning to realise she had seen very little of the White House until now. Eleanor clearly didn’t know as many secret places as her father. Eleanor’s power to upset Alice was diminishing. Abandoning all her good intentions, Alice imagined scoffing at all Eleanor’s games and suggestions. Alice could hardly wait to see Eleanor so that she could tell her about all the things and places she didn’t know. But then she knew she would keep quiet. This adventure would be a secret she shared with Doctor Ramsay.

The steps led to a dark basement. The door had been open and they ended up in a small room with shelves packed with boxes with dates written on them. Alice could make out the words on one box as they went past: ‘Edith Barwick Murder 1931’ was printed in thick black lettering.