Laura Possessed (14 page)

Caroline leant forward intently, hands tightly clasped. This time she wouldn't panic and run away like a fool, she'd play it over and over until she could understand how those particular sentences had come into the context about the clock.

‘—crystal ball or whatever it is tells you everything about me!'

Laura's voice said hesitantly, ‘Lewis—please don't be angry. I only thought—well, even if
you
didn't actually mention it, it was just the setting for a—'

Caroline frowned, chewing on her lip. Surely it was here that—? She let the machine run on for a few minutes and then stop as it came to the end of the tape. There was no trace whatsoever of the voice that had disturbed her so much. Puzzled, she flicked the switch and played the passage through again. Definitely this was what she had listened to before. The intruding voice couldn't have been erased, because while it had been speaking, she'd been aware of Laura's voice faintly in the background, replying to Lewis's accusation. Now it was simply that without the overriding sentences she could hear her more clearly.

Baffled and uneasy, Caroline went through the relevant portion once more before, defeated, she returned the cassette to the drawer and replaced the one which had been in the machine before.

Perhaps, she thought uncomfortably, the voice had been in her own head all the time, that of the conscience she had been trying to ignore over the last few weeks. But why, for heaven's sake, the American accent?

She shivered and stood up, suddenly cold. The house was cool after the heat outside and she was still in her brief sundress. She hurried out of Laura's room and back to the deckchair she had left to answer Lewis's ring. It wasn't until she lay back in it, letting the hot
canvas
warm her cool shoulders, that another uncomfortable thought came to her. She had not after all been able to prove anything with the tape. The house had won again.

Fortunately Caroline had accepted an invitation to play bridge that evening, and she was careful to leave the house before Lewis arrived for his two-hour session with Laura. Three times now he had rebuffed her, she reminded herself bitterly. On each occasion she had vowed he would not have another opportunity, and each time her treacherous body had betrayed her. She had no intention of laying herself open to any further fiasco. Yet even as she assured herself of this, she knew despairingly that she, who had always been so much in control of herself and everyone else, was powerless when it came to this one man. If he invited her again, as he surely would, she knew that she would go to him, and the knowledge in her present state of furious hurt was galling indeed.

She was soon put to the test; he phoned the next morning.

‘Caroline, I feel all sorts of a fool about yesterday! I can't imagine what got into me—I must have been out of my mind! Ever since I left you I've been kicking myself. I won't be surprised if you tell me to go to hell, but I very much hope you won't.'

He waited but she didn't, couldn't speak.

‘Will you give me another chance? Please? I
have
to go to Tonbridge this morning but I'll be back about four. Will you come?'

She moistened her lips. ‘Lewis, I really think—'

‘Look, I was a bloody fool and I hurt you, I know, but I have to see you. If you want me to beg, all right, I'm begging!'

For a moment longer she fought with herself, but she knew it was useless. She heard herself say expressionlessly, ‘Very well, Lewis, I'll come.'

* * *

It was very hot, close with the approach of thunder. Her hair was damp in the nape of her neck, clinging in little tendrils to the side of her face. The sun had disappeared and the light filtering into the room through the heavy branches of the tree outside filled it with a luminous green twilight.

She pulled deeply on her cigarette and moved her head lazily to look at him. ‘How's the book coming along?'

‘All right, I believe. I haven't seen it.'

‘It's good of you to give up so much time to her.' She hoped belatedly that the latent jealousy in the remark hadn't sounded as obvious to him as it had to her.

‘I don't mind. You know, it's funny, but I enjoy being with her. She's a strange little thing.'

‘I
shouldn't have thought she was your type,' Caroline said acidly.

‘That's just it, she's not. And yet—' He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Hell, you're the last person I should be discussing it with!'

‘I don't see why. You made it very clear there are no strings. What were you going to say?'

He took the cigarette from her hand and drew on it himself, his eyes narrowed against the smoke. ‘It's hard to explain, but there's some curious kind of affinity between us, and it's getting stronger.'

‘I see.'

‘I think the root of it is that she reminds me of someone. God knows why—she looks nothing like her.'

Caroline's nails bit into her palms. ‘The girl you once loved?'

He nodded almost absently, his eyes intent on the ceiling.

‘It was her photograph you removed from the scrapbook?' she persisted.

‘Yes. Stupid, I know, I just didn't want it to go out of the house.'

‘Go on.' She was determined to sound cool and detached, to give no inkling of the frighteningly powerful jealousy that was tormenting her.

He said awkwardly, ‘You don't want to hear all this.'

‘But I do. Funnily enough, Richard said the
same
thing, about there being some kind of bond between you and Laura.'

‘Richard? Then I'm more surprised than ever that they agreed to let her go ahead with the book.'

‘I don't think they'd any choice. She was
so
intent on it there was no stopping her. Actually, Richard did try to make her agree to go back to London with him that weekend, but we all knew it was hopeless. Anyway, it was Edward who'd mentioned you first as someone who had seen a lot of—'

‘Violence?' Lewis asked softly.

‘Yes.'

‘A charming reputation to have, but true as far as it goes.'

Caroline drew a deep breath. ‘Have there been any more instances of her “remembering” things?'

He turned his head and looked at her oddly. ‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, like the twisted trees, or that fairy tale about the little boy.'

‘Yes, there have, actually. Several.'

‘That reminds me,
did
you by any chance save Harry Tait's life in Biafra?'

She felt his body tense. ‘How the hell—?'

‘Laura told me.'

‘Well, I sure as hellfire didn't tell
her
. You know, Caroline, there are times when she puts the fear of God into me, and I vow I'm never going near her again. And then—I don't know.
A
sudden turn of her head or an intonation in her voice reminds me of Noel, and for that I'd follow her to the ends of the earth.'

After a moment Caroline said tonelessly, ‘But you say she doesn't look like her.'

‘No. Yet sometimes I'd swear, if I shut my eyes, that it was Noel talking to me. She even uses some of her favourite expressions. The first time I noticed it was when we were having drinks that Sunday. That was what shook me, nothing to do with my ankle.'

Caroline said slowly, ‘You know, she
is
different. Of course, when she first came out of hospital we expected her to be—well, subdued, but as she's grown stronger, it doesn't seem to be her own personality that she's reverted to. Not as she was before the accident, anyway. And she's developed an odd way of talking.'

‘So it's not just my imagination.' There was a note in his voice which lifted the tiny golden hairs along her arms. ‘Odd in what way, would you say?'

‘Just—unusual, somehow. This morning, for instance, she came into the dining-room winding her watch and said, “What time do you have?” It sounded—wrong.'

Lewis said very softly, ‘You mean she uses American phrases?'

‘American? Yes. Of course, that's it! Because she hasn't an accent it didn't register, but that's it all right.' She laughed a little.
‘Perhaps
she's just been watching too much TV!'

Beside her Lewis lay unmoving. At last he said, ‘Is there anything else you can think of?'

‘Not offhand, except for the endless humming. Sometimes I could scream! And it's always the same tune.'

Lewis's hand snaked out and closed over hers, tightening remorselessly until she thought the bones would splinter.

‘Lewis! Don't! Stop it you're hurting me!'

‘What tune?'

‘What?'

‘What is the tune she hums?'

‘Hell, I don't know.' She rubbed her bruised hand. ‘That thing that was very popular a few years ago—someone and his something brass. I used to like it, but I've heard enough of it this last couple of weeks to put me off for good.'

‘Hum it!' he commanded harshly.

‘Lewis, what on earth—'

‘Hum it, Caroline.'

Hesitantly she hummed the first few bars and the words came back to her. ‘This guy's in love with you—'

With a suddenness that made her jump he swung his legs to the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands while his rasping breaths grated through the eerie greenness of the room.

She said sharply, ‘Are you ill? Lewis—shall I get a doctor?'

He
turned his head slowly and she was shocked at the expression on his face. ‘It's not a doctor we need,' he said with difficulty. ‘If you ask me, it's bell, book and candle.'

She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. ‘I don't understand.'

‘That makes two of us.'

‘That tune—'

‘It was Noel's favourite. We were dancing to it the first time I told her how I felt.' His breathing was still laboured. ‘After that she bought the record and we played it every time we were together. Whenever I hear it, things come flooding back—odd incidental little details I'd forgotten. And Laura has the same effect. Simply by looking at her, I remember things that happened years ago, things I'd forgotten.'

‘Like the clock?' She was too distraught now, too caught up in his agitation, to care if she gave away her eavesdropping, and he too distraught to notice.

‘Yes, that damnable clock. That was another instance. It had stood for years on the sitting room mantelpiece; my mother was extremely proud of it. One day when she had punished me for something, I went in there. I suppose I must have been about eight or nine. Anyway, I had to stand on a stool to reach the mantelpiece. I simply and deliberately swept my hand along the length of it, and of course the clock fell into the fireplace and smashed in
pieces.
I can see it now, lying shattered with its innards whirring and coiling.' He smiled thinly. ‘As you can imagine, it's not a memory I'm especially proud of. The only person I ever mentioned it to was Noel, who wanted to know all there was to know.'

‘And who has remembered,' whispered Caroline.

His mouth twisted. ‘The same thing struck you?'

‘She was American, wasn't she, Lewis?'

‘She was indeed.'

Not Fenella Gray after all. She shivered uncontrollably. ‘Leave us alone!' ‘Us'? Could that mean Laura and Lewis? But Laura wasn't Noel—was she?

She said on a high note, ‘Lewis, I'm frightened!'

‘So am I, Caroline. So am I.'

‘We must do something to stop it!'

‘No!'

‘But, Lewis, it's—it's horrible!'

‘Not horrible. Frightening, certainly, but not horrible.'

‘Does Laura know, do you think?'

‘I've no idea what Laura knows.'

‘Edward will know what we should do.'

‘I said no! Nothing must be done to interrupt the sequence.' He straightened at last and turned to her, his eyes burning in his livid face. ‘I forbid you to say anything to anyone, do you hear? Anyway, there's nothing
concrete.
It could all be imagination. This premature gloom doesn't help.' He switched on the light and they blinked in its hard brilliance.

‘But I must tell him, Lewis! She's going insane!'

‘Nonsense. She's entirely rational. The most obvious explanation is that she's being used, perhaps without her knowledge, as some kind of medium. And you don't go putting them in padded cells, do you?'

‘But surely we ought!'

‘Caroline!' His voice lashed out at her and she came to an abrupt halt. ‘I lost her once. No one's going to make me lose her again!'

She said jerkily, ‘You're the one who's insane!'

‘Perhaps. Heaven knows, it wouldn't be surprising if I were. But in the meantime you're to say
nothing
to anyone about this. I should only deny it anyway, and perhaps you'd be the one ending up with a psychiatrist!'

‘This is the end, isn't it?' Her voice was shaking. ‘We can't go on after this.'

‘I don't know. God, I don't know
anything
! Caroline, I'm sorry! It's not as though I can control it. You saw how it was at Four Winds.'

She stared at him, her face white. ‘You mean it was
Noel
that—? My God, you
are
mad!'

‘Can you honestly tell me you don't feel anything in that house?'

Against
her will she remembered the impression she had received of the house pitting itself against her, the uncomfortable awareness of a malevolence, a kind of spite towards herself. Jealousy?

A sudden crash of thunder sounded directly overhead and the light flickered as lightning sliced through the room. At the same instant rain started to fall, drumming on the leaves of the tree outside and turning the approach lane into a sea of mud in seconds.