Simply Heaven (54 page)

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he snaps bitterly. ‘Sorry, sorry,
sorry
. Why don’t you try thinking
before
you do something?’

‘That’s unfair. That’s
so
unfair!’

He roars. Like a lion. No. Nothing as powerful. Like some animal that’s been trapped and realises that it’s about to die. It’s a sound of sheer frustration, rage and – despair.

‘Unfair? Don’t talk to me about unfair! That’s
my family
! I will
not
be … ripped away from my family. Not by you, not by anyone!’

I respond. ‘But it’s OK for
you
to do it to
me
, then?’

‘What?’

There are things you look back on with shame in life, and the words that come out of me at this moment are among them. My temper. My bloody
temper
. I’ve not changed a bit; it’s all been waiting in there to come out and sabotage everything.

‘Your family saw mine off without a bloody
murmur
from you. You get rid of my family, but
yours
… oh, no! Your sainted bloody family comes before
everything
. You won’t live your own life, you’ve wasted your opportunities and your talents, you stay around here doing what
Mummy
tells you and jumping through hoops not to upset
Granny
, and it’s bloody
killing
me! It can’t go on! I can’t live with it any more! I thought I’d married a
man
, and instead I’ve married a … a …
Mummy’s boy
. A pathetic bloody under-the-cosh
Mummy’s boy
.’

I might as well have slapped him as well as his mother. His head jerks backwards and his mouth clamps shut, and he looks at me as though I have suddenly peeled off a mask to reveal a bug-eyed alien underneath.

‘Is that really what you think of me?’ he asks. And sits down again, this time in the chair, hands hanging loose over his knees.

I sit down myself, on the bed. The gulf between us is way more than physical. Because I should know by now that the survival of relationships – the real maintenance of the happy fantasy we call love – is as dependent on the things that are
not
said as it is on the things that are. And I should know this one fundamental truth: that words, once spoken, can never be taken back. Apologised for, forgiven: but never taken back.

‘No … look, no. No, I don’t think that.’

‘But you said it.’

‘Please. I’m stupid. I say things. I …’

He looks down at his hands. They’re scraped and raw and beaten up from where he has spent the last two months labouring to mend and shore up and postpone the inevitable cataclysm.

‘I’m sorry that I’m a disappointment to you,’ he says eventually, reproachfully.

‘No, sweetheart, I didn’t mean that.’

But he’s shutting down, the way people do. The way they do when they are hurt without understanding the reason.

He puts his hands back down on his knees. Hoists himself out of the chair. ‘Well, I’m tired, Melody. Too tired to talk about it now.’ He walks towards the door.

‘Where you going?’

The voice that answers is drained of emotion, listless. ‘I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I’m on my feet, trying to go to him, but the look on his face tells me to keep my distance. ‘Please, Rufus. Can’t we talk about it?’

‘Not tonight. I’m sorry, but I can’t take any more character analysis tonight. I know you’re perfect and I’m full of failings, but there’s only so much I can take at one time.’

‘I never said … I never
said
that!’

‘Stuff it,’ he says. ‘To be honest, I couldn’t care less.’

‘But where are you going?’

‘Oh don’t worry,’ he replies spitefully. ‘I’m not going to
Mummy
, if that’s what you think. I’m just going to go and – be by myself somewhere. I know it’ll come as a shock to you, but even
I
need some time alone occasionally.’

I feel like all the wind has been knocked out of me. ‘Don’t go.’

He doesn’t reply. Turns the door handle and pulls the door open.

‘What will I do?’ I ask pointlessly.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Melody, for once I’m not going to take responsibility for that. You can work it out for yourself.’

‘Rufus,
please
!’

He pauses in the doorway, looks me up and down with the pregnant dislike I have so thoroughly earned.

‘Perhaps you can take one of your pills,’ he says, and leaves.

Andy stands over the bed, pearls that were his eyes, and he is not sneering, like I would expect, or laughing, or even angry, as far as I can see. He’s just sad. Andy, who rarely sported any expression other than the dumb insolence of the unreconstructed male, has a look of such pitiful woe on his face that, if I didn’t know he were dead, I would be asking if we’d lost a test match or something.

He is wearing the clothes I last saw him in, salt-bleached and tattered now, and his hair hangs down like seagrass. I seem to be welded to the bed, my arms and legs so heavy they pin me to the mattress.

‘You killed me, Mel,’ he says. But it’s not an accusation, not a reproach: it’s a simple statement.

I want to speak, but my jaw is frozen, my tongue a lifeless slab of meat in a sensationless mouth. So I lie still and look at him, and try to show him with my eyes:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But, see? I’m getting my reward now, ain’t I? I didn’t get just to walk away
.

‘I never thought you did. Though there was a time there when I thought you were running rather than walking.’

I can’t answer, because I know he’s right.

‘Don’t run away this time, babe,’ he says. ‘Stick it out.’

Why are you being so forgiving?

Andy shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You can’t be blamed for what someone else did.’

I can feel the tears stream down my face.
But it was, it was. You don’t understand. Andy, I’m so sorry
…

He stands and looks at me for a moment, says: ‘I didn’t come for that. I came to tell you to take care. You’re not safe, babe. They’re playing a higher game than you understand.’

What can I do? Tell me, Andy. How do I fight them?

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘But, babe: you’d better wake up. There’s someone in the room with you.’

And then he’s gone, and I’m awake, and even before I reach consciousness, I am crying, though I knew while it was happening that I was only dreaming. I can feel the gooseflesh rising on my arms. I’m alone in the big bed, straining to shake paralysis from my limbs. And I’m casting around with my eyes because I know that what he has just said is true.

Someone has lit a candle. Over by the window. It stands in the centre of the pedestal table and glints feebly, doing more to throw the room into shadow than illuminate it.

My heart leaps – hope, and fear, mixed together in one sick adrenal lurch. A wind has got up outside while I have been asleep; it rattles the window and makes the tiny flame dance and jitter.

‘Rufus?’

A small movement, just outside my field of vision, beyond the bed-curtains. But no reply.

I struggle upright, covers heavy on my legs, head heavy with slow-clearing sleep from where I was knocked out by Nytol because I’m not letting diazepam near my baby. And then I remember that, before I took the pill, I locked the door from the inside: partly in pique, partly to stop intrusions. There’s no way he can be back.

I swing my legs to the far side of the bed from where I sense the presence, try the bedside lamp. It’s dead: clicks with a dullness that suggests that the electrical supply has given out again.

The candle gutters. The house shifts and groans. And a cloaked figure steps out from behind the curtain, turns its blank and hooded face towards me and laughs.

I don’t scream, this time. I’ve learned my lesson. But I’m on my feet and across the room like a greyhound out of a trap, and fumbling with the key before my ghostly visitor has reached the foot of the bed. And in turn, it doesn’t speak: just shakes a white hand from the drape of its sleeve and points a skinny finger in my direction, lets loose another peal of mocking laughter. Not funny-ha-ha laughter: the laughter of the bully watching the weakling scrabble in the mud. Laughter that contains nothing of humour and everything of violence.

The key catches, turns in my hand, and I burst out into the corridor, cold damp air on my arms and shoulders, my satin slip no protection against the wintry night.

In the bedroom, someone trips, stumbles, lets out a grunt of surprise and annoyance. There is nothing supernatural about the sound. I’ve been visited by someone very real and very solid. And then I hear his footsteps resume and tumble towards me, and this knowledge brings me no comfort at all. The passageway suddenly seems very long and very empty. I am half naked and alone in a house that is, to all intents and purposes, deserted. I look about me for some object – a candlestick, a doorstop, anything that’s hard and would fit into the palm of the hand – but there is nothing. Wattestone ancestors gaze, glum and disapproving, at my tangled hair, my bare feet.

He appears in the doorway. I do the only thing I can think of, and run. I bolt towards the stairs, see ivy leaves thrash like storm-swept seaweed against the windowpanes. The banister is cold beneath my hand, treads slippery with varnish. I can’t hear him behind me now, but I keep up my pace, pattering downward, my ears only half-registering the whispering that pursues me.

Leave. Leave. We don’t want you here. Get out. Get out. GET OUT!

I don’t need telling twice. I should have left last night; shouldn’t have waited, hoping, stupidly hoping, that Rufus would change his mind, that he would come back for me.

I reach the first landing. Swing round the corner, screech to a halt on the very edge of the top step of the next flight. Have to grip the newel with both hands to stop myself from pitching forward into the dark.

Below me, looking up, hands tucked into heavy sleeves, empty blackness where the face should be, is my monk.

I am rooted to the spot, sound of the ocean in my ears.

He begins to climb the stairs.

I run west.

Heavy dark-wood Gothic of the Victorian wing. Stuffed animal heads watch the far distance with blank glass gazes. Wattestones in black – white bonnets and thyroid eyes – ignore me as I scutter beneath them and whisper:
We don’t want you. You are not one of us
, at my retreating back.

I don’t know where Rufus is. I don’t know if he’s even in the house. I try doors as I pass, but they either refuse to open at all, or swing back to reveal cavernous expanses devoid of occupation. I never knew a place so large could also be so claustrophobic. The house itself is watching me. I can feel it from the prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck.

The wind buffets the windows again, air pressure suddenly up, then down, as though there’s been an explosion in the foundations. The house moans in protest. I make for the Victorian staircase. I still don’t know what my intention is. I’ve no clothes, no keys: even if I can make it to the car, I can’t drive away.

The descending section of the Victorian staircase has been blocked off with scaffolding. I’ll have to go through the Queen Anne wing before I can go down. Glance over my shoulder before I mount the stairs. The corridor is empty.

The long gallery: gloomy light filters through uncurtained windows on to bare floorboards. The suits of armour that line the walls from one end of the room to the other, brandishing swords and battleaxes and ancient longbows, have the air of long-dead guardians awaiting the opportunity to return to life. I pause on the threshold, try to check each in turn for signs of movement, realise that I have no alternative but to pass them anyway, and set off to jog the hundred metres to the far door. I stay in the centre of the room, glance left to right as I go.

The door behind me bursts open, and a dark figure flies through, cloak hems billowing round sprinting legs.

And now I’m truly running myself: through the long gallery door, down the Jacobean corridor, tumbling, leaping down the tollbooth stair without even holding the banister.

And he’s there. He’s there again, coming up at me. How can he be? I must be seeing things. I must. How can he be behind me and ahead?

I can feel the scream build. Choke it down. I can’t show fear. Can’t show more fear than I’m showing already. Muster a voice from somewhere in the bottom of my throat and say, stupidly, lamely: ‘Can I help you?’

There’s no reply. What am I thinking?

I stand my ground. Search for words. Try them out in my head for signs of weakness.
What do you want? Why are you following me? Keep back, I’ve got a gun
…

‘What can I do for you?’

He doesn’t reply. Just raises an arm to show me the object in his hand. It’s a kitchen knife. Eight inches long and pointed, for filleting. I don’t need telling twice. Bound up the flight I’ve just come down, belt along a Persian runner into the Jacobean wing. Black wood, panelling, heavy dark furniture that squats in the moonlight like stalking trolls. I don’t know my way around here well. Have only been here in daylight, passing through, following Rufus, going to the library.

Footsteps hard behind me. I step up my pace, feet slapping on polished teak, feel my face harden in a grimace. I know now what it feels like to be a fox, pursued for sport, hunted down and cornered and seeing my own mortality.

I hear him behind me. Panting more heavily than I am, heavy footfalls slapping about, as though he is beginning to flag. Perhaps there is a chance. Perhaps I can outrun him, wear him out; if I can only get far enough ahead, I can go to ground. Hide out until the danger has passed. I decide to head for the very core of the house, for the Tudor staircase, where wings, north, south, east and west, diverge from a single point and where, if I get there with time to spare, I can dive away into the darkness and lose him for good. Burst through the green baize door at the end of the corridor, rattle down the servants’ staircase and hurl myself into the final straight. The passageway is lower here, more cramped, ghastly imps’ faces looming from decorative plasterwork. I snatch hold of a huge pewter platter that sits on a table, frisbee it behind me. Hear it bounce from something hard, then the
oof
, receding behind, as it catches its target. Almost manage a smile of triumph –
take that, you bastard
– but lack the energy. Turn a corner, then another one, and I’m there. Turn east.