Collected Stories (41 page)

Life is what you make it

A simple philosophy and one easy to follow for a rich young lady in the nineteenth century. I closed
Moorland Master
and was reaching for the next manuscript when a low, almost masculine voice made me jerk round in sudden alarm.

“Young man, come here.”

It took courage to approach the chaise longue, then look down at Caroline Fortescue. She had not moved, the eyes were still half closed, but the mouth was wide open, as though the lower jaw had dropped. I managed to say:

“I’m Brian Radcliffe... a... a guest in your house.”

The rasping voice spoke again, but I could detect no movement either of the mouth or tongue. I could only suppose she had taught herself to speak with the stomach muscles, but each word was pronounced with precision.

“Of course, I had forgotten. I am inclined to be absent-minded these days. Time has become fluid, it ebbs and flows so that today often merges with yesterday. More, it sometimes recedes beyond yesterday. I daresay you are confused.”

I shook my head. “No... that is to say I am trying to understand.”

“That is fortunate. Poor Jenkins only thinks he understands. But our time is short for I shall soon drift away and next time we meet...” She paused and I heard a ghost of a chuckle. “I’ll not be entirely myself. There is a question you wish to ask me.”

I swallowed and tried to select one question from an entire army. “Yes, why did you stop writing after 1911?”

“Because there no longer existed the need to write books. I was able to live them. If that is an unsatisfactory reply, I can only add – think on what you have already seen and heard. Then you will... There is I believe a feeding cup nearby.”

I looked around and saw the china vessel with a long spout standing on the mantel shelf and on taking it down found it contained a small amount of the white liquid.

“Yes, I have it here.”

“Then be so kind as to pour liquid nourishment into my mouth. I am conscious of a drying up, purely illusory no doubt, but no less real.”

With an unsteady hand I poured enriched milk into that gaping hole, then withdrew the cup when the mouth filled. Little riverlets of white moisture spilled over and ran down the chin, but the remainder gradually disappeared, although I could not detect any sign of swallowing. The stuff seemed to be merely sinking down her throat. The harsh voice spoke again.

“Thank you. But I fear the result is not satisfactory. I am slipping away again... slipping away. Remember not to... to... or all will be... lost... lost...”

I waited for a long time, hoping (but dreading) she might speak again, but although the mouth remained open, no further sound came from it. Presently the door opened and Jenkins came tip-toeing across the room, his face lit by a gentle smile.

“Did you have a chat with her ladyship, sir?”

I nodded. “Yes, we had a brief but interesting conversation. But, Jenkins, how does she talk? Her mouth...”

“No questions if you please, sir. Now I see her ladyship has gone back to sleep. Splendid. I’ve prepared a light lunch, so if you would care to come downstairs, we’ll leave her to rest.”

I did not encourage the old man to speak during lunch for there was a distinct feeling that if I pressed him too hard, he would tell me something I did not want to hear. In this I was aided by his built-in compulsion not to speak when a
superior
displayed signs of wishing to remain silent, and this I did by frowning when he so much as cleared his throat. At last the meal ended and I volunteered to help him wash up, a suggestion he dismissed with something akin to horror.

“I’ll take a little walk,” I said quietly, almost daring him to make any objection. “Just a stroll round the grounds.”

His head was averted when he answered. “An excellent idea, sir. But it might be well if you kept to the drive. The woods are dangerous at this time of year. The undergrowth conceals boggy patches that can trap the unwary. I entreat you, sir. Keep out in the open.”

“I will not take any unnecessary risks,” I promised.

As I walked across the drive I knew he was watching, darting from window to window and possibly sighing with relief when I turned right and skirted the woods, wading through knee high grass until I came to an overgrown hedge that was breached by an old stile. This I climbed, then after making certain that I could not be seen from the house, entered the woods.

Dense undergrowth impeded progress, whippy twigs stung my groping hands as though some rustic deity were trying to protect its gloomy retreat from invasion. I veered left looking for the path my nocturnal visitor had taken the night before. Eventually I stumbled on to it; a barely perceptible parting that ran through stunted ferns and crumbling leaf mould; a ghost path which had died long, long ago.

To this day I am not certain how long I followed that narrow, almost non-existent trail, but suddenly I found myself facing a large clearing in which stood a snug, red-bricked cottage. It was familiar, yet more than a little disturbing. I tried to remember where I had seen such a cottage before, but could only conjure up mental pictures torn from brightly illustrated books, last seen before cosy nursery fires. Woodland cottage, elderly loving parents, a beautiful daughter who held intimate conversations with loquacious rabbits and other members of the animal kingdom.

A sloping red-tiled roof, two windows up and two down, a green door in the centre; a crazy paved path that divided a flower-rich garden; all protected by a white picket fence broken by a green gate. Dazzling white curtains masked the windows, flaming red geraniums enhanced the lower window sills, while blue smoke drifted up from two squat chimney pots.

Fear – apprehension – flowed back before a feeling of supreme contentment, creating the ridiculous impression that I – a wanderer on the vast plains of time – had at last come home. But below the surface, under the crust of self-deception, unwelcome knowledge seethed and threatened to manifest as indisputable fact. But I also knew with an unquestionable certainty, that in this place fantasy and reality were but two meaningless words man had created for his convenience. The truth was much more complicated.

I opened the gate, closed it carefully behind me, then walked slowly up the path and mounted the single, hearth-stoned step. I tapped on the green door and waited with keen expectancy for someone to welcome me. The door drifted open and I looked upon the model parents; those that we, when young and misunderstood, always wished for but rarely, if ever had. The woman could have been a youthful fifty or a mature forty; auburn hair, gentle dark eyes and a smiling mouth – the eternal mother for a perpetual child. The man! Those who can, think of Ronald Colman – handsome, grey-haired, urbane, neither young or old; a man of the world who had the ability to dismiss fear with a single word, banish doubt with a charming smile.

It was he who stretched out a long-fingered hand and said:

“Why, it must be the young man who is staying at the big house! Cathy has been on tenderhooks all day. Come in, my dear fellow. I am so pleased to see your ankle is better.”

Mother blushed and appeared quite willing to kiss me if given the least encouragement; and both made me feel like the prodigal son arriving home for his share of the fatted calf.

I was drawn into a narrow passage, then ushered into a comfortable parlour (that definition came most easily to mind) that smelt faintly of warm damp and the cloying aroma of decay. But there the bright red wallpaper looked as if it had been recently put up, the furniture newly purchased from a Victorian store, the patterned carpet delivered that morning from the factory.

Mother gave me a wonderful smile and motioned me to a deep fat armchair, while Father stood in the doorway and called out:

“Cathy, come down, dear. Your friend has arrived.”

I did not hear her descend the stairs, neither did it seem possible she had time to do so, for almost at once my moonlight girl was following her father into the room, her face enhanced by a faint blush. She said: “Hello, how is your ankle?” and promptly sat down in a chair opposite mine. Without hesitation I replied: “Much better thank you. It was so kind of you to help me,” and actually seemed to remember having my swollen ankle bound with a large silk handkerchief. But from then on I began to experience great concern about what I had done and said since entering the house, and what I might do in the immediate future. For example: I could remember Father stretching out his hand, but I could not remember if I had shaken it or not. For some reason this seemed to be very important. Maybe because Jenkins’ instruction kept crashing across my brain.
“Make no contact... whatsoever.”

Was sitting on a chair making contact? I gently pounded the arm of my chair with a clenched fist. It seemed solid enough, and that which the senses record must be real. Three pairs of eyes watched me; Mother kindly, father expectantly, Cathy lovingly. Father spoke:

“We are so glad you came. It is very lonely sometimes.”

Mother expelled a deep sigh. “We could not live without Cathy, but she needs new material. I think that’s what I mean.”

Cathy’s lilting voice made me start.

“What is the use of a book unless it has printed pages? Would you like to stay with us forever?”

Truth wore a shroud as she hammered on the door of my brain, but I refused to admit her; face the grotesque dream. That lilting voice went on and on.

“Fiction can only flourish in the garden of fact. Even my genius cannot snatch fantasy out of the air. And there must be romance. A beautiful young man who comes walking down the lane. He’s lost I think and is limping. Or maybe he’s escaped from a prison in which he was unjustly confined, or jilted by a girl in that cruel outside world. But here – in this refuge from ugly reality – he will find his true love. They will make unsullied love in the melancholy purple twilight and send beautifully composed dialogue drifting up to the dark dome of heaven. They will never grow old, not even when the sun reaches out and consumes its children.”

Mother and Father had become as two wax statues that sat perfectly still with kindly smiles etched on their flawless faces. But Cathy moved. She stood up and stretched out slender arms. I did not surrender immediately for were there not three words blazoned across my brain in letters of fire? do not touch. But why? Could it be that long ago the original Cathy used to torment those
gentlemen callers
; flirt, tantalize, promise with her eyes, then draw back in pretended or real fear when they stepped over the line which separates reality from make believe? “
Don’t touch me. Don’t ruin the dream.
”

Sex creates. Frustrated sex still creates.

Fear made the hair of the back of my neck bristle; anger, unreasoning rage drove me forward – straight into those outstretched arms.

That lovely face was transformed into a mask of naked terror and my God how she screamed. For a brief moment I clasped a slender body in my arms, gazed into wide, wide open eyes and tried to smother that unending scream with my mouth. Then suddenly it seemed as if a mighty cold wind came roaring through the woods; it blew away the cottage walls, turned the furniture into scattered rocks; and sent me hurtling down into a bottomless pit.

***

When I recovered consciousness and had climbed up onto a strangely shaped boulder that had been so recently, a fat, deep chair, I was at last able to gaze upon the naked face of truth. I will be haunted by that ghastly knowledge until the day I die and it is one of the reasons why Wilfred Frazer never got his world-shattering story and why I am writing it now. Perhaps when it is once committed to paper I will be granted some peace of mind.

The old house basked in the afternoon sun, its upper windows gleaming slabs of light, that to the fanciful might have resembled the eyes of a mythological monster newly awakened from a century-long sleep. When I emerged from the woods and began to cross the drive, my shadow elongated and went streaking out before me, as though it could not wait for me to enter the house. It was then that I realized what had been so dreadfully wrong with Cathy when she crossed the drive in moonlight.

She had not cast a shadow.

Even from the hall I could hear the harsh sobbing, punctuated by an occasional wailing cry. I walked slowly up the stairs, then entered the room where the remains of Caroline Fortescue, Lady Bramfield lay upon the great four-poster bed. Jenkins was on his knees beside it, mourning his dead.

I said quietly: “When did she really die, Jenkins?”

He looked at me reproachfully with tear filled eyes.

“When you broke the dream, sir. When you touched. I warned you, sir. Do not touch, I said. Do not touch. You killed a living legend.”

I went over to the bed and looked down at the thing attired in a rusty black gown. Where the eyes had been there were now two gaping holes. A wave of anger made me shout:

“You lie, Jenkins. Lie to me – lie to yourself. She died long ago.”

He shook his head violently and pounded the bed with clenched fists. “No... no... you’re wrong. She was more alive than you or I, or anyone who walks the earth today. She created her own world...”

I grabbed his coat collar and pulled him to his feet. I placed my mouth within a few inches of his ear and whispered the awful truth. “Listen to me... don’t pull away, shut your eyes or plug your ears. That lovely creature that roamed this house at night, ran laughing along the passages, lived with make believe parents in a woodland cottage – that wasn’t the real ghost. Was it, Jenkins? Eh? That was how Caroline Fortescue saw herself-as maybe she once was. No, the real ghost was somewhere else. Where was that, Jenkins? Tell me.”

When he struggled and cried out I released him and he fell across the bed. Suddenly I was very tired and wanted to be far away from this house of death. I spoke quietly.

“Her dream world was so real she could not leave it, not even after death. So... so... she haunted her own corpse. Some personality fragment was able to delay decomposition, simulate the need for nourishment and dominate you, the necessary attendant. I don’t know how much longer this pretence could have gone on. Until you died possibly, for only you could maintain the great illusion. But before I go, satisfy my curiosity. How long has she been dead?”