Nyctophobia (25 page)

‘I couldn’t decipher it.’

‘It says, “Where they shall live for our freedom.” It sounds like a quote, but I don’t think it’s Cervantes. Of course, you can study him all your life and still find new things you’ve never noticed before. His writing is as astonishing as Shakespeare’s, as you’d know if your English language wasn’t so dominant. Let’s have a look at these –’ He picked up the letter packet tied with ribbon.

‘I think they’re from Francesco Condemaine to his wife,’ I explained. ‘It was said that he wrote her a love letter every day. She kept them in a bureau and always carried the key with her.’

‘Well, that’s romantic.’ He cut the rest of the ribbons and sifted through the envelopes checking the dates. ‘Perhaps not one a day but there are quite a few here. Do you mind if I open them? They’re not very fragile – they had good quality paper back then.’

‘No, of course not.’

Jordi cleaned his glasses. ‘It’s very florid styling, a formal technique. Typical of traditional Spanish petitions of love for that period.’ He peered more closely. ‘“
When you gave me the fortudinous honour of becoming your enamoured
”, and so on... This is interesting: “
For neither good nor evil can last forever, and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.
” That’s definitely a quotation from
Don Quixote.
And this –’ he held up a single page with just one line written across its centre. ‘“
Demasiada cordura puede ser la peor de las locuras, ver la vida como es y no como debería de ser.
”’

‘Can you translate?’

‘“Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.”’

‘That’s what he wanted for her. He built the house to protect her.’

‘So it appears. “
My rituals, which must seem absurd to you, can only ensure your lasting happiness.
” I wonder what rituals he’s talking about?’

‘God, please don’t let there be Satanic rituals involved,’ I said. ‘That’d be the last thing I need, on top of everything else that’s happened.’

‘Why, what else has happened?’

I was surprised that Celestia hadn’t confided in him. ‘I’ve been seeing them in the house.’

‘Who?’

‘The Condemaines. The whole family. They live in this part, the part that doesn’t seem to exist.’

‘Okaaaay,’ said Jordi slowly, giving me a very strange look. ‘You’ve actually seen them?’

‘I’ve been attacked by them.’

‘Why? What do “they” want?’

‘Fine, you’re humouring me, I shouldn’t have said anything,’ I replied with more anger than I’d intended. ‘The Condemaines – their spirits, their souls or whatever you want to call them, they’re still in the house. Trust me, Jordi, I’m the last person who’d ever believe in this sort of thing but I’ve seen them, felt them.’

‘Has anyone else? What about your husband?’

‘No, he’s so wrapped up in his work at the moment that he doesn’t have time to think about anything else. Bobbie believes me – she’s seen them too.’

‘She’s a child.’

‘I didn’t coerce her. She came to the conclusion herself.’

Jordi set aside the letters and looked at me. ‘It strikes me you’ve gone a little off-subject. Weren’t you meant to be working on your architectural book? And here you are exploring ghosts? This is very Spanish behaviour. Are you sure you’re not a Catholic?’

In answer, I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the marks on my arm, which still had not fully healed. ‘What do you think these are, stigmata? I was attacked in the rooms that don’t appear to exist.’

He was silent for a long time. ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘I think you need to take a break from this. Maybe you should just put the writing aside for a while. You don’t look –’

‘I know, everyone keeps telling me how terrible I look.’

‘It’s just – maybe you should spend some quality time with your husband.’

‘How can I? I hardly ever see him anymore.’

‘It’d be good if the two of you came into the village one evening and just had dinner together, away from the house. Get to know some of the residents here, not just on a superficial level but so that you can properly understand them. So few foreigners bother, and it would be to the benefit of both sides.’

Jordi made sense. Just like Mateo, he had that forthright manner I had come to identify as typically Spanish, honesty without insult, a quality I greatly admired. Chastened, I started to gather the letters up.

He appeared embarrassed, as if he had overstepped the mark. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you leave the letters here and I’ll go over them in my spare time? Perhaps there’s something else I can find out that might explain what’s happening to you –’

I could have kissed him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The Doubt

T
HE MANIFESTATIONS
– I had come to think of them as that – suddenly stopped. Sometimes I listened at the connecting doors, or stood outside at the windows trying to see through the gaps in the shutters, and was relieved when I saw and heard nothing.

But new fears surfaced. Four days after Mateo had left I found a postcard in the mailbox. On the front was a monochrome photograph of Greenwich Village in the 1920s.

It read:
Hola Cachonda – I always send Bobbie a card so I thought you should get one too. Working hard here, no time for fun, NYC exactly the same as London, overcrowded, same people, same shops, movies and shows but longer working days. Miss you horribly. Probably back B4 you get this! XXX M

There were two cards for Bobbie: one from Julieta, who had set her study schedule up to the Christmas season, the other from Mateo. I found I had little of the teacher’s patience. Bobbie would focus on one element and keep asking questions about it until I had no answers left. Lessons were exhausting.

My mind kept drifting to the abandoned car, and the fact that I had still not been able to get hold of Anne. I tried again when I returned to the house with the card, and miracle of miracles, she answered.

‘I was starting to think that something had happened to you,’ I said, relieved to hear her voice.

‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ said Anne, ‘I’m sure I told you I was going to stay with Sandy for a few days? My phone doesn’t seem to work down there. She lives in a sort of hollow and makes most of her calls through her computer, which I don’t understand because how can a computer get through when a phone can’t? It’s simply absurd. And there’s no television reception so I’m missing my favourite soaps.’

For once it was a pleasure to hear her prattle on. ‘What happened to your hire car?’ I asked, cutting across her complaints about the general uselessness of phone companies.

‘You mean after I left you?’

‘Yes, I found it off the side of the road.’

‘Oh, I meant to tell you about that, it was just so embarrassing. I was feeling a little the worse for wear when I left your lovely house and pulled over to take an analgesic, but somehow it was still in gear and I went off into some bushes. Well, obviously I couldn’t come back up to you after we’d parted on such bad terms, so I called a cab company. When I got to Malaga I told Avis that their car had broken down, but I don’t understand why they haven’t come to collect it.’

‘It gave me a fright finding it down there.’

‘I imagine it would have done. Listen, I know I rarely admit such things, but perhaps I was wrong to say what I did that day. I just get so – frustrated – with you sometimes. You know I don’t mean half of what I say, don’t you?’

‘I suppose I do, but you do hurt me.’

‘Well, I shall try to make it up to you, darling, I promise.’

My mother had no intermediate modes of expression; either everything was wonderful and I was a darling, or the world had gone to Hell and I was a bitch. She displayed all the symptoms of maternal bipolarity. I rang off, not entirely surprised by her explanation for abandoning the car.

With Bobbie busy taking a home tutor course on my laptop, bemusedly supervised by Rosita, I got a taxi into Gaucia. Jordi was at his usual place in the library, stacking trashy paperbacks for the few tourists who passed this way in the off-season.

‘I went through the rest of the letters and made some notes,’ he said. ‘The Condemaines had no servants beyond a housekeeper, Senora Delgadillo’s great-grandmother.’

‘So the dark rooms weren’t servants’ quarters.’

‘I guess he left them off the floor-plan because back then, in this area, you were taxed by the number of rooms you had. They don’t appear until the next owner’s survey.’

‘That would have been Marcos Condemaine,’ I suggested. ‘He stayed there until the outbreak of the Civil War. After that it fell to Amancio Lueches.’

‘Obviously the letters don’t cover later events, but there are a few references to Senor Condemaine’s occultism. Let me see.’ He ran down his notes. ‘Yes, he refers to the house as “a psychic conduit of the eternal soul” – more flowery language. He created this conduit “by the practice and ordinance of sacred ritual.” Unfortunately he does not say what these rituals were, but they seem to have involved the worship of Hyperion. There are references to the performance of them in the back of the house.’

‘Thanks, Jordi, but you’re right,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have sent you off on a wild goose chase. I’m meant to be producing an architectural work, not a folklore history.’

Jordi shrugged. ‘I think the beliefs of people are tied to the houses they build, don’t you? Look around the houses in Gaucia, and the smart rooms for receiving guests that always have a crucifix or a statue of the Virgin, just to prove how pious they are. I think your architect did not believe in God – but he did have faith in the power of the sun and moon.’

‘It would explain why he incorporated so many planetary symbols in the decoration,’ I agreed. ‘But I don’t understand why he believed they had the power to make his wife happy, or what it has to do with me.’

‘Our surroundings can have a powerful effect on us,’ Jordi said. ‘Look at the height of our cathedrals, designed to encourage prayer by instilling a sense of fear and awe at the power of God. Maybe the small rooms were built to remind them of what they had.’

‘You’re a smart lad,’ I said. ‘You’re wasted here.’

‘I know.’ He lifted his feet off the desk and grinned at me. ‘But I’ll get away. I’ve had enough. I want to find a nice girl of my age. Do you think if in another life you hadn’t been married, you would have gone for me? I’m closer to your age than your husband.’

‘Jordi, that’s inappropriate,’ I told him, but felt secretly flattered, even though it explained why he had been so keen to help me.

‘W
ELL
OF COURSE
he’s in love with you,’ said Celestia when I found her in Eduardo’s café. ‘If you’d arrived here single, you could have done a lot worse for yourself.’

‘I’m not sure I enjoy seeing the life I didn’t have,’ I said, accepting a glass of coffee. ‘Besides, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Mateo.’

‘At least Jordi’s around all the time.’ She set aside her newspaper. ‘We hardly ever see that husband of yours.’

‘You saw him last Saturday,’ I said. ‘He came in to get some paintbrushes.’

‘Perhaps he did,’ said Celestia, ‘but I never saw him.’

‘But he told me he had a drink with you.’

‘He may well have had a drink with someone but it wasn’t me, I can assure you. I was here all afternoon with Maria, and we didn’t set eyes on him.’

I was positive I had not made a mistake. I distinctly remembered Mateo saying that he had shared a bottle of wine with Celestia, which was why he had got back so late.

‘He came in on the evening of the Wednesday before, as well,’ I said. ‘He had a drink with you then, didn’t he?’

‘I know my memory’s going but believe me, I’d definitely recall sharing a table with your husband.’

‘He said he was here with you.’

‘Callie, I hate to say this but, well, he’s away a lot –’

‘Many people are,’ I said, instantly defensive. ‘It’s the way the business world works now.’

‘Perhaps he just needs some time for himself occasionally.’

‘He gets that when he travels.’

‘I mean proper time. He obviously loves you but maybe he needs something else.’

‘Are you suggesting that he’s having an affair?’

‘No, of course not, but men respond differently. Most of them find us tiring to be around all the time. My husband left because he said I was too needy.’

‘That’s just an excuse – I’m sure it’s the house, it’s doing something to him.’

‘The house? What could it be doing?’

‘I don’t know. They want to destroy us.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘The Condemaines, of course! They want what we have, and I won’t let them have it.’ I pushed my coffee aside and rose. ‘I have to go.’

I heard Celestia calling after me, but I ignored her.

As I arrived back at the house, the postman was just arriving. He handed me an envelope which I recognised as being from Bobbie’s new school; details of her uniform requirements and where to buy them. ‘Two deliveries in one day, that’s unusual,’ I said.

He leaned out of the van window with a look of apology on his face. ‘I only just got here.’

‘Yes, but you came earlier.’

‘No, you’re my first stop today.’

‘No, you delivered two postcards this morning.’

‘Not me, Senora.’ He turned the van around and pulled away. It made no sense. If he hadn’t put the postcards in our box, who had?

I returned to the house and put in a Skype call to Mateo. It would be early in New York but I needed to hear his voice. I clearly pulled him from the depths of sleep; as he sat up in the hotel room bed I could see that his eyes were barely unglued and his hair was a rats’ nest. ‘Honey, I was out with clients until late last night. Isn’t it a little early?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m just feeling a little weirded out here.’

‘I told you there’d be times like this after the summer was over, didn’t I? How are you going to be through the winter months?’

‘I know I shouldn’t pester you, but there are odd things happening that I can’t explain.’