House of Bells (23 page)

He seemed content just to watch her. And then, when she was done, to chivvy her gently out of his cottage and see her on her way back to the main house. Letting her go alone, just as he had before, even though he knew this place was dangerous to her.

If she was going mad, then they both were; and there was something coldly, unkindly sane that underlay everything he said, just as his ketchup underlay everything she'd eaten since she came here. She wasn't at all sure about herself, but she didn't think that he was mad at all.

She didn't want to walk the narrow path he'd brought her by, back to the stable yard. Particularly, she didn't want to walk through the stable yard again.

She could tell herself she didn't want to face irate candle-makers, with their wax all spilled and their bath upturned. She could tell herself that, so long as she recognized the truth, that it wasn't true at all. What she didn't want to face was – well, something else. Something with hands. Not her dead baby, who had nothing and was nothing and would have sucked wax in rather than reaching out with it.

Maybe that was how he grew, how come he was growing: he sucked in stuff and made it into nothingness. It's what he was doing with her, she thought, slowly and surely. She had been something once: not a great thing, maybe not a good thing, but something at least. Already she was only a shell, hollow and pretending, inhabiting the story of who she used to be. Soon enough now, she'd be nothing at all.

Avoiding the stable yard, though, meant walking the other way, down the wide rough lane until it joined the drive from the road. Deeper into the wood, that meant. Some girls she knew would be frightened as a matter of course, going in among the trees on their own. She had better reason for it, a dozen better reasons, everything that had happened to her since she came here; all the strangeness had started when Mr Cook dropped her in the wood.

Except that – she thought – it had started when Frank rang his bell, and it would have happened wherever she was, whenever she heard it. She thought. It wasn't the trees to blame. She was no more afraid here than anywhere – or just as much, which came to the same thing in the end.

Her clothes were splashed with wax, like a vivid confession; her sandals were slimy with the stuff. She wanted to sit and pick her feet, peel wax away like dead skin. She'd like to bathe and change, if she could find something clean to wear. She'd like to hide the evidence, whether or not.

She came on to the drive with nothing else in her head, blessedly free of premonitions or memories in the cool shadows under the trees. Dressed in guilt and wanting only to be free of it, she turned towards the house – and heard a car coming, and stepped back into the leaf litter before she saw it, before she could even think how unexpected that was.

She knew the car as soon as she saw it, perhaps even before she saw it. There was only the one car up at the house, though she supposed they might have had visitors. It might have been a new recruit, brought by a taxi that was now returning. Or it might have been a police raid, against all the drugs in the house; or an old shipmate of the captain's, come to pay a call; or . . .

All sorts of things it might have been, but she didn't believe any of them, and she was right. The car that came bumping into sight around the curve of the drive was that same old Morris Traveller, without the ladders now but still gaudy, still decorated with strange symbols that she might guess to be letters of their new language. Still inhabited by two hairy people who honked cheerfully at her, slowed unexpectedly, stopped right where she stood.

‘Hi!' The boy with the Afro leaned out of the passenger window. Squinting past him, she decided that the driver was almost certainly another boy, though it was still hard to be certain, to see through long hair and shadow. Hippy men should be obliged to wear beards, she thought, just to keep the poor girls clear, who was which. ‘I'm Charlie,' he went on, ‘and this is Fish.'

Which was no help at all; and
why Fish?
was as impossible to ask as
what sex is Fish?
, so she settled for a neutral, ‘Hullo. Where are you going?'

‘Into town, if you want to come along. Run a few errands, pick up some stuff. Have a drink, if any pub in town will serve us. Fancy it?'

‘Oh!'
Yes
, but . . . ‘I don't know. I ought to . . .'

‘Ought to what? There isn't any
ought to
, not here. That's why we like it. One reason why. Anywhere else, we ought to be doing something useful too, but we're not. We've decided to skive off for the afternoon, so we are.'

She seemed to be opening the rear door already, as though some decision had already been made. Sitting down on old rubbed leather, she said, ‘I thought you were running errands? That sounds useful to me.'

‘That too – but we'd decided to skive first, which is what matters.' Apparently that was important, that their choice had been for idleness, whatever came after. Whatever they knew must come after. ‘Then people started loading duties on us, “while you're there”. That's how it works. It's the old “while you're up” trick.'

If he wanted to sound aggrieved – if he wanted to feel aggrieved – he should probably work harder at it. She was fairly sure that the truth was entirely the other way around: that he had volunteered and was trying to cover for it after the fact. Maybe it didn't do to seem too keen. Like girls at school, where it didn't do to seem too bright. Boys didn't like that. She wasn't clear here who he wanted to impress: the silent Fish, perhaps, who had to do the driving? Or her, perhaps? She had after all been walking quite the other way, but the car had stopped regardless . . .

Anyway. Here she was and doing things his way: seizing the moment on an impulse, accepting his offer with no thought at all, and now thinking how handy it was. She had errands of her own in town – one errand at least, if she could rid herself of company for half an hour.

That shouldn't be hard. In London, she'd only need to ask the way to the nearest chemist's. Grown men would blush and jump to conclusions, point mutely and vanish. With this crew she wasn't so certain that would work. They'd probably try to convert her to sphagnum moss or wild sponge or something equally natural and repulsive.

Still, the day had not yet dawned when a determined woman couldn't shed two young men in a public place. And yes, she was sure now about Fish; his arm might be as slim as a girl's, but the hand on the gearstick was raw and awkward, man-sized, masculine. He didn't speak, but she was still sure. His cheek was smoothed by razor, not by nature.

They parked in the cobbled square. She sat for a moment in the vacated car before she remembered: they weren't in Soho any more. Two young men, and neither one of them would think of opening the door for her.

She did it for herself, then, and slithered out with grace enough to out-Rank the Charm School. And was all set to ditch the pair of them with a delicate murmur about shopping for delicates, when they did it themselves, for themselves, ditched her: ‘We're going this way, things to do. See you at the Golden Lion later? It's OK; we're welcome there. Cookie vouches for us.'

She knew that; it was where she'd found him. ‘Oh – yes, of course. What time . . .?'

But they were gone already, side by side, so close they could almost be hand in hand; so close she could truly have confused them again and thought them lovers.

Oh . . .

Never mind. She pulled her thoughts back to her own needs, her own desires; headed straight for the Golden Lion and asked the landlord if she might use his telephone.

‘There's a public phone on the square, miss.'

‘Yes, but someone's in there. Please, it's very urgent. It won't cost you anything. I'll reverse the charges, and I can pay you for using it – only not until next week.'
Money's not an issue
, she had money back at the house, only, stupidly, not in these spattered clothes. She hadn't anticipated a trip to town, a trip anywhere. She wouldn't have had pennies for the call box either, though in honesty she hadn't even looked for it. How long had it been since she'd used a public call-box? She couldn't remember; not since she was a teenager, at any rate. There were things you just didn't do any more, you shouldn't need to.

He hesitated a bare moment – wax-spotted stranger – before leading her down the passage to the hotel reception-desk and leaving her there alone with the telephone. She wasn't sure whether or not he remembered her from yesterday, but it seemed likely. He might think she'd survived one night at the commune and was yelling for help. He might encourage that.

He might listen in on an extension, but she didn't think so. Mostly, she thought he was doing this for Cookie's sake, as he had with the scone and tea yesterday: some long-standing complicated exchange of favours that she was now tangled up with. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

She picked up the receiver, rang through to the operator and said, ‘I'd like to place a trunk call, please. To London, and reverse the charges.'

At home she could just dial his number directly, any time she felt like it, so of course she never did. Here there was a delay that seemed endless, clicks and hums and a heavy physical silence, like a blanket, stuffy and full of dust. Then she heard his voice, his simple public-school: ‘Fledgwood,' as though that would always be enough, and the operator's brisk response:

‘Will you accept a reversed-charge call, sir?' Her accent, perhaps, was a giveaway; he was already saying yes before she'd named the exchange. And then, ‘You're through, caller,' and the only sound on the line was his breathing, and suddenly she couldn't speak. Which was her own kind of giveaway, and potentially fatal.

He said, ‘Grace?'

Which at least gave her the chance to say something: ‘No. Georgie.'

Bless him, he didn't laugh. ‘Of course. Georgie.' His employee, not his subject matter. ‘How's it going, Gee?'

Gee. She liked that. She said, ‘I'm not sure. I'm in, but – well, this place is wacky.'

‘Of course it's wacky. That's why you're there. Wacky how?'

‘Different from what I expected. It's not all long hair and free love. I mean, it is that, but it's more too. More serious.'
And haunted
, but she didn't want to say so. Instead she said, ‘I found your reporter for you.'

‘Francis? Did you? That's quick work.'

‘I think I did. He's called Frank here. But – well, he's wacky too. Wacked, I think. I think he's certifiable.'

‘Occupational hazard, pet. He was never the straightest pipe-cleaner in the box. What's he been swallowing?'

‘I don't know. I haven't seen anything here harder than dope, not yet.'

‘Well, it's only been a day.'

‘Yes, but . . . I don't think drugs are the thing here, Tony. Not for most people. There's something else; it's bigger than that. More ambitious. They don't just want to get out of their skulls, they want to convert the world.'

‘Religious?'

‘No, not really.' Or only Mother Mary, and she'd likely call herself spiritual instead. ‘They're like . . . like Billy Graham without God. They still think there's a better way to live, and they're going to tell everyone about it. Once they get it sorted out for themselves.'

Tony laughed. ‘That could be a long wait. But it sounds . . . harmless. Which is not what I'd heard, and not why I sent Francis in.'

‘I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't ever say that. They might be innocent.' But that wasn't always the same thing. The innocent could trail harm behind them like a fire trails smoke, like the Beatles trailed fans. Like she trailed harm herself –
sorry, Kathie
– even though she was far from innocent. The opposite of innocent.

The house knew. It knew her, better than anyone did. Better than Tony. It saw through her, where he only wanted to see her through.

She said, ‘I'm sure there's a story here.' The captain and Webb between them: the builder and the evangelist. John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. The fuel and the spark, perhaps. ‘But I think maybe you should talk to them, not spy on them. I think you could learn more.'

‘What's up, precious? Are you buying into what they offer?'

‘What? No! No, I'm not.' Though she could see how it worked, at least. She could feel their separate allures, Webb's and the captain's. If she only stayed here long enough, who knew? Maybe she would buy into one or the other, believe in the place as somewhere to be, or the man as someone to follow.

Not that she planned to stay that long. She didn't think she could afford to. She didn't think she'd survive it.

Perhaps he heard something of that in her voice as they talked, as she described the house and the way it worked as best she could after so short a time there. She didn't mention her hurts or her fears, but they were hard to step around when the whole time had been a progression from one strange happening to the next, and she bore the scars of every one of them.

At all events, abruptly and out of the blue, he said, ‘Sweetie? D'you want to come home?'

‘No. Not yet.'

‘Sure?'

No.
‘Yes,' she said aloud. ‘I'm sure. You gave me a job and . . . and I want to do it.'

‘You found Frank already, and that's the main thing.'

‘Yes, but I want to find out what happened to him. I want to
understand
. And so do you, Tony Fledgwood, that's why you sent me here.'

‘Yes . . .' But he sounded uncertain even of that, as though he'd had another better reason underneath. Saving her from herself, one way or another. ‘Not if you're going to crack up too, though. It's not worth that.'

‘I promise, I'm not going to crack up too.' Unless she was cracked already, seeing ghosts at every turn – but she really, really didn't think so. She thought the ghosts were real. So did Cookie. She could rely on him, she thought, if not so much on herself.