Remember Why You Fear Me (53 page)

And I remember how different it was in the darkness. Some of our number made jokes, but they were uneasy jokes, and Margaret called for silence. And S
_____
began. As I’ve said, he was not a natural performer, but I think his nervousness did something to lighten his shy monotone, it gave the piece a wavery inflection. “What stuff is this!” said one student, Baines, halfway through, and Margaret rounded on him; she told him bluntly that he had to shut up or leave. Baines’ interruption had sounded scornful, of course, but I knew where it had come from; a desire to break the atmosphere, to emphasize that what we were listening to was really just nonsense, there was nothing to be afraid of. And Baines didn’t leave, he couldn’t leave, none of us could.

I can’t recall the details of the story now, and I see it isn’t one that S
_____
ever collected for publication. Quite possibly it lacked the sheen of the more practised stories he would later write; quite probably he lost it. The plot naturally enough sounds ridiculous, as most plots do when boiled down to synopsis: even Milton can’t escape that. It was something about an old curse, and a man who awakens it by reading a book, and the book (I think) was found in a crack in a wall of an abandoned church, or an abandoned monastery. And the hapless man is pursued by a ghost who drives him to suicide, setting himself on fire. S
_____
was the last person to perform that night, because after the lights were turned back on no one was quite willing to continue; I was just glad I’d got my Eclogue out first. S
_____
apologized. He could quite see he’d destroyed the party. He hadn’t meant to.

It had hardly been an auspicious debut, but it was astonishing how its reputation spread. By the beginning of the Trinity term, S
_____
was being approached by students who had never deigned to speak to us before. They were asking whether he would perform it again. I knew
S
_____
didn’t want to. He was, as I say, a naturally shy man. But he found it hard to say no, especially when it seemed that friendship (or, at least, acceptance) was being offered to him at last. He asked Margaret what he should do, and my girlfriend said she thought he should try again—and if it would make him feel better, she would be there too to support him. At this he agreed. He performed the story another four times, I think, and then he added another story, and then a third, and it was a cold Winter that took its time to thaw, and everybody seemed to be in the mood for something dark and creeping. And S
_____
’s name became something that was known on campus—even though, as I warned him, it was for his frivolous fictions; his Middle English prowess, by anyone’s standards, left much to be desired. By the time Baines killed himself S
_____
had an identity—and, as his best friend, so had I.

Student suicide was a fairly common phenomenon around exam-ination times, but what made Baines’ one unusual was that it occurred in March, and mid-term at that; with fewer opportunities to distract us, his death occasioned no little interest. He left no note. His friends said they were quite surprised, because he hadn’t even hinted taking his life was under consideration. And it was the manner of the death that really caused comment. Most students liked to hang themselves, or took poison, or, if they were of an especial melodramatic bent, threw themselves off the bridge. Baines had set fire to himself.

It was clear where he’d got the idea from, of course. And S
_____
was appalled. He came to me one night, and he was shaking, so Margaret and I didn’t turn him away, although I must confess I was a little put out. He asked us whether we thought he should write to Baines’ parents to apologize. (We said no.) He asked whether he should confess his involvement to the police. (Definitely not.) He asked whether he should stop his ghost stories—and at this Margaret and I disagreed; I felt it’d be inappropriate for S
_____
to write any more of them, even ones that didn’t involve self-immolation of some kind or another. In truth, I was rather tired of having a reputation based upon my knowing a spook writer—I felt it was high time I found a reputation all of my own.

It was around this point that Margaret and I broke up. S
_____
came to me and asked if he could step out with her instead. His hands were wringing and he was stammering, he looked as pathetic as he had when I’d first met him, he was that frightened. And I told him that he was welcome to try his hand. That I’d had enough of her. That I’d used her up. But I suggested he might not have much luck knocking against that particular door. “Oh, no, you don’t understand,” he said, and he looked truly wretched. “Margaret’s asked
me
out. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t mind.”

I didn’t see much of S
_____
or Margaret after that. It really wasn’t personal, and I still regarded them as friends. But I don’t think they were quite as subtle in their love as they might have been; on a Sunday you could see them kissing on a punt, and I thought that lacked a certain class. And at Christmas S
_____
was asked by the senior staff whether he would perform a ghost story. No longer something hidden behind the doors of drunken undergraduates, but as a part of the formal celebrations. I can only imagine how terrified he was. I imagine Margaret got him through it. I wasn’t in attendance at the revels that year, I agreed to go home and spend the holiday with my family.

We rubbed alongside each other quite comfortably over the next few years. Whenever we met, we would greet each other affectionately enough, with protestations that it had been far too long, that we should all get together again soon, the Three Musketeers forever, that we were still all so close and dear. And when I had an invitation to the wedding, I genuinely considered going. But of course I’d found new friends, and I didn’t need S
_____
or his girlfriend any longer, his fiancée, his happy little wife. I won a first class honours for my degree, of course, and was offered any place I wanted to go and study for my doctorate and teach: I chose Oxford. S
_____
got his first just barely, I understand, and was kept on right where he was. I think they took some pity on him. I think they liked his Christmas ghost stories. And there was no need for us to meet again. He was fourteenth century, I was seventeenth; we were kept apart by entire centuries of difference.

I didn’t speak to S
_____
again for a very long time. There were the Christmas cards for a while, of course, but I rather think he stopped writing to me before I stopped writing to him. It was fifteen years before I had a letter marked “Shearman” again—and that was surprise enough, before I realized it was initialled M J, not R S. I still didn’t think of Margaret having a surname like that. I couldn’t.

Margaret told me she was passing through Oxford the following week; would it be possible to have lunch with me for old time’s sake? I wrote back at once, and assured her I would; and I followed her request that I should be discreet, not to mark the envelope so that it was clear it had been sent by me, and I would normally have found such fuss rather irritating, but I decided to indulge her. It led me to believe, of course, all sorts of idiotic things. That for fifteen years Margaret had loved me, and only me. That finally she had worked up the courage to say so. None of this chimed with the Margaret I knew, of course, the woman who had taught us how to punt, how to smoke cigars, how to (yes) love. But it was a happy fantasy all the same.

We agreed to meet on a Thursday, in a cake and tea shop that one of my undergraduates recommended, somewhere quiet. I was shocked when I saw her. She hadn’t aged well. I could see the resemblance to the girl I’d known, but it was a resemblance one would find in a
mother
—she had always had a fleshy figure, with cheeks so plump they dimpled when she smiled, but now she’d thinned, and it made her look hard and plain, and when she smiled the smile had nowhere to grow. Her eyes were dead. We had tea. I asked her how she was. She said she was well. I asked her how S
_____
was, and at this she sighed. She said he was well too, she believed. She stressed the ‘believed’, as if there were some cause for doubt, as if she might not be the best person to judge. I asked her why she had come. I told her I did not believe she was passing through to anywhere, and I was right. She told me that S
_____
was a different man. I asked her if he hurt her in any way, and at this she looked rather offended. She said that he had days of mistemper, but the mistemper was always with
himself
; he was remote; he seemed, if anything, and she picked the word carefully, haunted. I laughed and told her that would seem appropriate for those little spine chillers of his, and she attempted a laugh back. And all the while she wouldn’t look me in the face, and at first I thought this was out of shame, that she wanted to apologize, and my heart went out to her, her embarrassment was apology enough. But as our time wore on, and she still wouldn’t look at me, and she still wouldn’t tell me she regretted the way we had parted, I rather decided I wanted a spoken apology after all. “Could you go and see him?” she asked. “He wants to see you. He needs an old friend. And he’s too proud to ask.” I told her that I would think about it.

But that was in August, and I had a new term’s lecturing to prepare, and a new paper to complete. In December I received my annual invitation to the high dinner on Christmas Eve at my alma mater, and as always I threw it into the dustbin. But something made me pull it out and reconsider.

I saw S
_____
perform that last time. I didn’t recognize him at first. If Margaret had aged, that was nothing to her husband. He was a man in his late thirties now, but he didn’t look a day under fifty. And a badly worn fifty at that—his hair had greyed, he wore a drooping beard that did nothing to hide how his face sagged. And he was hunched—as he sat at dinner, he seemed bowed over the food, as if in some grim obeisance towards it. I didn’t let him see me, of course. I kept my distance.

And I decided that this was all a mistake. That I should get out before I was identified. Get out before Margaret saw me, and made it impossible for me to leave. But no one looked at me, and I searched the room for her, I looked hard, and Margaret wasn’t there. And then S
_____
read his ghost story. He performed. As I say, I don’t think he performed it well. I don’t think it was a good story. But the world seemed to shift, and I decided I had to explore what this new world was before I got back on the train to Oxford and lost myself once again within the old one.

It was strange. After the impact his story had made I would have expected S
_____
to have been flooded with well-wishers, students and academics alike congratulating him. That had certainly been the way when he was an undergraduate performing his ghost stories for the first time—and how shyly he had received those compliments, how he had blushed. But now, though he was a bona fide celebrity, everyone ignored him. The lights were turned back to full, he sat down morosely, stared at his food, prodded at some vegetable matter with a fork.

I went to see him.

“My God,” he said. “Is it you? Is it really you?” And his face lit up, and years fell off it in an instant—not enough, I should add, he was still pushing fifty, but it was an improvement. “Did you like my story?”

“I’m afraid I arrived too late to hear it,” I said. And at that his face fell so glumly, and I wished I could call back the lie. I wanted to reassure him, I promised I’d come to the next year’s.

He indicated I should lean in, he wanted to say something to me in confidence. “There won’t be another year’s,” he said. “I’m getting out of it. I’m getting out of the ghost story racket.”

I told him I was pleased to hear it, and he nodded seriously.

“Can we talk in private?” he said. “Can you come to my rooms?”

And I said yes.

He seemed properly affectionate towards me as he showed me in. As if all the years of silence hadn’t mattered a jot. He showed me around his study, waited for my approval.

“More than serviceable,” I said.

“I’m sure your rooms in Oxford must be . . .”

“Well, yes,” I said. “But that’s Oxford.”

He nodded.

I told him that academia would be delighted he was giving up his spook stories, that he had become something of a laughingstock. And he smiled and said, “Indeed, indeed!” and nodded, like a crusty old don, like the crusty old don he’d become, wanting to make a good impression on his bright young pupil.

“I should have listened to you in the first place,” he said. “That’s the truth of it.”

I asked him why he’d written horror stories in the first place. And I expected the same answer he’d given me so many years ago. But it was different.

“Because,” he said, “horror has to find a way out into the world.”

I didn’t quite know what to say to that. He looked apologetic. Wine, would I like some wine? To ease the mood, I said I would. A cigar? Why not, I said. We lit cigars, and as always, he never looked comfortable with a cigar, it looked ridiculous jutting out of his mouth like that, his eyes watering all the while. “This is good,” he said, “this is fine, having you here again, yes, yes.” I asked him how he was, generally. Like Margaret, he said he was well. I asked him how Margaret was. Well, he believed. I said I was pleased.

“They’re not stories,” he said suddenly.

I asked him to repeat himself.

“They’re not stories,” he said. “They’re all true.”

I scoffed at that. Asked him whether some sort of ghoul scaring hapless hotel patrons was
true
.

“No,” he said. “I’m not saying it happened. But it’s true all the same.” He poured me another glass of wine. “But,” he said, “I’m stopping that now. Before it’s too late. And there’s nothing they can do to me worse than what I’ve done to myself and to Margaret.”

He asked how I was. I said I was well. He asked if I had a wife, was she well? I said I didn’t have a wife, but if I had one, I’m sure she would be well, well. I told him to explain what was going on, I told him to stop dancing around the matter like a student who hasn’t prepared his tutorial.