Nyctophobia (11 page)

‘Francesco Gabriel Condemaine married his wife Elena in 1906. Six years later, he finished building their new home, the Hyperion Observatory. The couple had twin sons and a daughter. Although Spain remained neutral during the First World War, Francesco was half-British, and enlisted to fight on behalf of the allies, much against his wife’s wishes. In May 1922, Elena Condemaine was deemed unfit to take care of her family, and was subsequently taken to an asylum suffering from an unspecified mental illness, where she died a year later. The Hyperion Observatory was inherited by Francesco Condemaine’s cousin and his family, who lived there until 1937, when the property was requisitioned by Spanish Nationalists.’

‘How did you get on?’ asked Jordi.

‘There’s not much to go on,’ I replied, ‘but I have the architect’s name and dates now. I can try some other stuff online.’ Thanking him for his help, I headed out to the town square, where I found Celestia on her first glass of sherry and her first pack of cigarillos. She had tied her long auburn hair up in a bun and looked like a mad and rather wonderful gorgon.

‘Hello there,’ she called, imperiously summoning the waitress. ‘Come and sit with me. This is a nice surprise.’

‘I just came to use the library,’ I said. ‘It’s in a bit of a sad state.’

‘It’s dreadful, isn’t it? How can you have a Spanish library without Cervantes? Just old issues of
Hello!
and some dog-eared Harry Potters, nothing for a grown-up to read. We had hundreds of copies of that
Fifty Shades of Grey
thing. We burned them at the spring
feria
.’ She released a spirited cackle.

‘I was trying to find something on the history of the house. There wasn’t much to go on.’

‘You’re probably better off talking to some of the locals. You’ll need an interpreter, though. Not many of them speak English.’

‘Jordi has offered to help teach me.’

‘I bet he has. You should watch out for him, like all Spaniards he has wandering hands. Lovely little bum on him, though. Smart, too. He’s completely wasted here. Speaking of charming men, your husband is
such
a dish. There aren’t any decent men left around here, not that I care. I’m past that sort of thing. And Roberta – I find most children repulsive but she is delightful. How is she settling in?’

‘It’s all just a big holiday to her at the moment,’ I said.

‘Children are so
accepting
. And you?’

‘Doing better than I thought,’ I said. ‘It’s such a beautiful house.’

‘You’ll have to learn to slow down a bit, though. The sun takes its toll. You’ll find that having a kid around makes you take things slower, otherwise you run out of energy around lunchtime. When the heat hits forty here I get terrible dizzy spells and the only thing that will shift them is a lie-down with an iced towel. I suppose you have some staff to help you out?’

‘Yes, a gardener and a housekeeper, Senora Delgadillo.’

‘Oh, she’s a miserable old cow. We’re not good enough for her, apparently. She only comes into town for supplies and hardly bothers to talk to anyone. That’s the trouble with those old housekeepers, they start acting as if the houses they look after belong to them.’ She wagged a nicotine-stained finger at me. ‘You mustn’t let her do that. Let her know who’s boss.’

‘I’m trying to, but it’s not easy. Bobbie’s having a tutor from here, Julieta Cortez.’

‘Julieta’s a good sort. She had a hard time feeding her family after they shrank the school, so I’m glad that she has some work now. The younger generation doesn’t want to live here anymore.’

‘But it’s so pretty.’

‘Yes, and it’s also cut off from the action. The sons and daughters all want to live at the coast, where the nightlife is. Of course, nobody can afford to move there now, not since the crisis. Spain is so different to France and Italy. One always feels everything in Amalfi and Provence has been explored to death. The Frogs rip you off for dinner and wine then insult you behind your back, and the Eyeties blatantly rob you. Just when you think you’ve discovered an unknown corner, the villagers pop out to flog you tablecloths and napkin rings. But here there are still good people and quiet towns in regions that hardly anybody visits. They spent years getting out from Franco’s shadow, then the unemployment crisis started all their troubles again.’ She ground out her cigarillo with a vengeance.

‘I must get back,’ I said. ‘Bobbie’s teacher has to leave at noon.’

‘How are you getting there? Shall I order you a taxi?’

‘Oh, I’ll walk,’ I said.

‘I don’t think that’s wise. It’s very hot out there.’

‘Honestly, I’ll be fine – it won’t take me long.’

‘Well, if you’re sure…’

I left Celestia leafing through an old
Sunday Times
, dappled in light beneath a fluttering tree, a picture of summer contentment.

I set off along the winding blacktop, but after half an hour I began to realise that I had seriously misjudged the heat and the distance. The blue-hazed views from the road down over the valley were astonishing, but the sun was relentless, and I had brought no water with me. I reckoned I was still less than halfway there when I began to grow dizzy. The hard bright landscape hurt my eyes. There was no wind, no breath of air, and no car passed. There was only the relentless abrasion of crickets.

Sinking to the low wall at the edge of the road, I shielded my eyes and watched for vehicles, feeling unnerved and foolish.

After a few more minutes I saw a wavering dark vehicle in the distance. It was Jerardo, passing in his smashed-up van on his way back from buying gardening supplies. When he saw me sitting on the wall, he pulled over and opened the passenger door. My shoulders and face were burning. If I ever decided to do that again, I knew I would need to be better prepared.

At that moment I came to understand just how cut-off we were at the house. With Mateo gone there would only be females here now, plus a mute gardener, and whatever passed in the shadows at the back of the house.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Other Side

M
ATEO HAD BEEN
away for three days, but Skyped me every night before he went to bed, and often called during the day when he was between meetings. As always, he was courteous and attentive, but I could tell work distracted him, and he didn’t really listen as I told him the news of the day, which usually amounted to bits of regurgitated gossip and perceived slights from Senora Delgadillo.

I had started to make up detailed floor plans for the house, but was missing some of the equipment I needed, and had sent away for some old-fashioned scale rules and compasses. I liked using CAD but still enjoyed the feel of tools and graph-paper. Meanwhile I continued to catalogue the furniture and antiques. None of them seemed to be especially valuable, but they suited the rooms so perfectly that I had no desire to rearrange anything or throw it out, not that Rosita would have let me.

While Bobbie proved almost impossible to wake up in the mornings (especially annoying, as her tutor arrived early), I found it difficult to get to sleep. I left the curtains open so that starlight could fill the top half of the windows in the master bedroom, but I missed Mateo. It seemed to me that he had become far more loving and sexually attentive since arriving at the house, which only made the nights without him worse.

Downstairs all the clocks still marked the night-hours, although I had managed to mute the one in the bedroom. It was odd sensing that the door at the end of the hallway led to a small version of our bedroom that no-one had lived in or even seen for years. Rosita had
still
not located the keys, and they now they had come to represent a test of wills between the pair of us.

On that third night without Mateo I checked the clock and saw that it was only 2:47am. Activity in the house naturally followed the path of the sun, so bedtimes were earlier than I was used to. I lay back, allowing the peacefulness of my new life to wash over me, listening to the distant ticking, the rustle of trees outside the window.

And beneath these sounds, something else.

I pushed myself up on one elbow. There it was again. A trapped cat, or a girl crying.

‘Bobbie?’ I called.

I listened again. Silence. Then something that sounded like a swallowed sob. Pushing back the sheet, I slid out of the high bed, padded across the floor and into the hall, positive that the sound was coming from the other side of the door at the end. I pressed my ear against the connecting door. The sound was fainter now, not dramatic, just stifled and fearful. I heard the softness of a sigh, the scrape of a chair leg.

There was somebody else in the house, I was sure of it. I tried the door, knowing that it was still locked. Returning my ear to the panel, I listened again.

Bang
– It was as if a fist had hammered against my ear on the other side of the wood. I jumped away from the door in shock, my ear ringing. But I found myself approaching again.

The crying had stopped. It was silent on the other side. Whoever had been there had left.

Oddly, I didn’t feel scared, just puzzled more than anything. I went back to bed and instantly fell asleep this time, waking at seven with the sense that I had probably dreamed the whole thing. Or perhaps just choosing not to think about it.

‘T
HE KEYS,
’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘I need them right this minute.’

‘But there is not a full set,’ Rosita insisted. ‘And the master instructed me to keep the doors closed during all the hours of daylight because he did not want you to –’

‘I’ll decide where I can and cannot go in my husband’s absence,’ I said, holding firm. ‘Let me have all the keys you’ve found so far. You won’t be blamed. I’ll inform Mateo that it was my choice. If you don’t, I’ll break the door down.’

Senora Delgadillo’s lips narrowed to a thin line. ‘Very well.’

She found a small footstool and made a big production of climbing on it, feeling around on the top of a freestanding kitchen cabinet and taking down a cigar box, which she handed to me with theatrical reluctance. Inside were a great many rusted bands of keys, mostly old iron flagstaffs. The rest were modern brass Yales for new locks that had been added since we moved in. I looked at them in dismay.

‘Is there any one set you use as the master keys?’

‘These.’ The housekeeper fished the largest ring out of the box. ‘But they are not all here. Perhaps among the loose ones…’

‘Thank you.’ I decided that Rosita was only doing her job, and softened a little. ‘I don’t want to disturb anything in the rooms, I’m not going to modernise them, I just need to see inside.’

None of the keys were labelled. As I was determined not to have her trailing behind me with a disapproving expression, it became a painstaking matter of trial and error to get any of the doors open. There was no point in trying the door in the drawing room, as it had the chest of drawers holding it shut, so I headed up to the first floor landing and the elegantly carved art nouveau door. It took over half an hour of fiddling with various loose keys, pressing and testing each bit against the tumblers in the keyhole, before I felt one turn over and unlock. According to Rosita, the key did not exist.

I carefully pushed open the door. A spear of light bounced from a mirror on the other side and sloshed into the room, as if someone had thrown yellow paint across the floor. The air was dusty and thick – there were no open windows, doors or grilles on this side. I breathed in. The room smelled old and unlived in, of camphor and dried lavender and damp. The dust was so thick that the patterns on the carpets and tablecloths had been lost. Small grey clouds formed behind me as I walked.

But it was perfect. Mateo’s wine racks could sit in here. I imagined them filled with rare amontillados. The room was a copy of the one on the sunlit side, as I had suspected, just much smaller and meaner-looking, the wood cheap and far less solid, a room probably deemed ideal for servants. It was disappointing to find no secrets or surprises.

I felt an old familiar sensation stirring, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I knew I was testing myself by stepping into the shadows. It’s a strange thing, nyctophobia. You’re not born with it. It can start at any time. It comes and goes, and it’s one of the only phobias you can transmit to other people. But it can also disappear without warning. My horror of the dark lasted for just over a year. During that time I couldn’t even step outside the house at night, and in London it doesn’t even get properly dark. Then one day I awoke to find that the feeling had gone.

The answer now was to leave the door ajar, admitting a shaft of reflected light that provided me with a path I could stay on. I wanted to go further and dig around in the drawers of the desks and dressers, but something stopped me. It was enough for now. I could see that nothing had disturbed the dust. Retreating, I was pleased to leave the room and lock it again.

I repeated the exercise in each of the rooms. In every one I could open, I found the same interiors, the same tables and chairs, but cheap ornaments stood on the sideboards and the mirrors were spotted and ruined. It was as if one half of the house had been cloned from the other, but its twin was smaller, sicklier, shabbier, designed to suit the second-class status of service. These meaner rooms seemed newer in some indefinable way, as if copied at a later date.

In the servants’ dining room, there was one difference. On the table where the meals would have been laid out there was a doll collection, the dusty figurines arranged in order of height. Seven ugly, puffy-faced dolls, probably Edwardian, corseted in adult clothes, with movable eyes and dry plugs of real hair. There was no match for them on our side, and I assumed they had once belonged to the waiting staff. I didn’t touch them for fear that they would fall apart in the desiccated atmosphere. There was an odd smell here, of a bitter vinegary herb, something I couldn’t quite recognise.

The only door I couldn’t get open was the one that connected to the drawing room. The chest of drawers had been pushed hard against it, and was too heavy for me to budge. I knew the rooms had to be connected between themselves, otherwise the servants would not have been able to get up to their bedrooms or reach the toilets, but there was no space between the house and the cliff-face for proper staircases, and I didn’t fancy creeping about the mean little passages and dark stairs that had to be back there without Mateo, so I decided to wait until he was home.