The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories (28 page)

It was a white, roughly oval object wrapped in a sheet which acted as a crude hood. The white oval had three black holes in it shaped like two eyes and a mouth. A faint shadow in the middle indicated a flat misshapen nose. It was unpleasantly both like and unlike a face. The thing was a mask, I concluded; but who would want to wrap a mask in a sheet and put it in a window? Were Freda and Gordon playing some sort of joke on me? They could be childish, but that kind of childishness was beneath them.

The two black holes at the top of the triangle seemed more like eyes the longer I looked at them. I had the feeling that, for all their emptiness, they were staring at me, not in a hostile or friendly way, but simply trying to absorb some part of me into their black depths. I thought I saw something glint in the empty sockets, but this may have been a trick of the light. The hole at the bottom seemed more like a mouth the longer I looked at it. It was elongated and, though lipless, it was surrounded by wrinkles that curved inwards towards the maw. It gaped, like a very old creature trying to catch its breath. The mouth began to work slowly up and down in a gumless chewing movement.

At that moment I managed to wrench my eyes away from the mask. Leaving my bicycle on the lawn, I ran indoors and upstairs to the long gallery. Anger had superseded fear. I wanted to expose the thing for the nasty fraud that it was.

But there was nothing in the long gallery: nothing to be seen or heard except a faint dry rustling sound that could have been a rat under the floorboards. I walked back down the stairs shaking and met Freda coming out of the drawing room. She had a gin and tonic in her hand.

‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘You look a bit green about the gills. Anything the matter?’ I told her what I had seen. ‘Oh that!’ she said casually. ‘You must have seen the ghost.’ What ghost? Whose? ‘Just the ghost. That’s all I know. It lives here. Only in the long gallery; that’s why we made you up a bedroom downstairs. I haven’t seen it myself, but plenty of people have. I believe it’s rather nasty.’ She seemed to find my further enquiries tedious. ‘Don’t be a bore, darling; I really don’t know any more than that. Now, what do you say to a slice of old Mrs Thing’s lemon sponge and a touch of the mah-jongs?’

So we played mah-jong, I with half a mind on the game, half on my astonishing encounter and Freda’s almost equally astonishing indifference to it. When I later tackled Gordon on the subject he was even more dismissive. I had the impression Freda and Gordon were trying to block the whole ghost idea out of their minds; that their lack of interest was not natural but willed.

When the Trantings came for Bridge the following evening I managed to have a few words in private with the Commander. Remembering it now, I am fairly sure that Commander Tranting had contrived to make himself available to me. I asked him about the ghost of Halton House and described my experience. He nodded.

‘I haven’t bumped into it myself, though I’m not dismissing it. I’ve seen too many strange things to be anything but an agnostic. I believe Gordon and Freda got Halton cheap because of it. Well all I know is that it takes many forms. This face or mask that you saw is a new one on me, not that I’m doubting you. But whatever it is it always appears in the same place at the window in that gallery.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I don’t know if ghosts are a “who”. They may be just a “what”, if you see what I mean. The only thing I do know is that bad things have happened in this house, and that gallery was always part of the story.’

‘What sort of bad things?’

‘Suicide, I believe. Always a dodgy business, suicide. I’ve never known a suicide that didn’t cause more agony than it cured.’

I wanted to ask him what he meant by this last comment, but just then we were summoned to the Bridge table. Two days later I found myself unexpectedly relieved to be back at school.

**

At the end of the following term Gordon left Stone Court. He was, in fact, ‘asked to leave’, but he went quietly. When he told me half way through the term that he was going to be dismissed I wanted to get up a protest, but he forbade anything of the sort. He said that my academic progress was far more important than his career at Stone Court which would have come to an end quite soon anyway.

A fortnight into the term Gordon had been found guilty at Canterbury Magistrates’ Court of driving under the influence of drink. Having discovered this Mr Capstick told J.V., the Headmaster. He added that a convicted felon was not fit to be a member of staff and that consequently Gordon must leave at once. J.V. was disposed to be lenient, but Capstick was implacable. A compromise was reached whereby Gordon should leave at the end of term. Even now, though I can appreciate Capstick’s position a little better, I cannot help feeling that vindictiveness played a part in his actions. I am also not so sure that Gordon minded going as little as he pretended to.

Out of defiance, and perhaps some loyalty, I wrote to him regularly over the next two terms. He wrote back, always taking care to type the address on the envelope so that no-one at the school would recognise his handwriting and confiscate the letter. His news at first seemed to be excellent. Using some money he had ‘scraped together’, as he put it, he had set up a small school at Halton House for teaching foreign students English. There were, apparently, plenty of foreign students in need of just such a facility. He sent me an elegant brochure for ‘Halton College’ which I forwarded to my parents in Athens. In her next letter back my mother wrote: ‘Daddy asks if Mr Barrymore has got permission from his landlord to use Halton House as a school.’ I passed the warning on, but neither I nor Gordon took it seriously.

The following Summer I took the scholarship exam and, much to my surprise, succeeded. Stone Court granted itself a half holiday to honour the achievement and Gordon wrote me a jubilant letter of congratulation. At the end of the letter, almost as a postscript, he wrote: ‘Alas, Halton College has had to close its doors for the time being. Some nonsense in the lease about not using H.H. as a place of business. I’m sure it’ll all sort itself out, but at the moment Freda and I are in a bit of a tight spot.’

As I had won my place at Winchester, I was granted a good deal of time off during my last weeks at Stone Court. I decided as a priority that I must visit Freda and Gordon. One Saturday I rang up Halton House and Freda answered the phone. She seemed delighted to hear from me, almost too delighted, and I said I would bicycle over for tea. I remember thinking as I rode over that the weather was as sultry as the day I had seen the face in the window of Halton House. When I came into the drive I did look up at the first floor window and thought I saw not one but two white objects staring at me from behind the glass. It was only for a moment though, because there was Freda in her lounger calling to me from the terrace. It was three in the afternoon and there was a gin and tonic on the table beside her.

She greeted me effusively and sat me down. ‘Now, tell me everything,’ she said. I did my best. I was as anxious to hear about her and Gordon’s ‘tight spot’, but whenever I tried to turn the conversation towards the subject she demanded more news of Stone Court. She was thinner than when I had last seen her and her hand, as she lit a cigarette, shook a little. I noticed that the wrist was bandaged.

When my news was finally exhausted I asked her where Gordon was.

‘Oh, in Canterbury on business, darling. He’ll be back shortly. I told him you were coming. He’s dying to see you. We’re probably going to have to leave Halton quite soon.’

‘Why?’

‘The money, darling. It’s gone!’ The withered, fleshless hand which held her cigarette described a vague arc in the air as if she were trying to show how ‘the money’ had flown. ‘It’s all been rather ghastly. I don’t know what we’re going to do.’ On an impulse I reached out and grasped her cigarette-free hand, so very small and fragile. I took care not to touch the bandage on her wrist. My action made me suddenly feel years older.

‘You are a darling,’ said Freda. ‘You’ve got a look of Michael. Did I ever tell you that? He was a love. He really was. Love of my life. . . . You know, when the money runs out I don’t know that there’s much point in going on. I don’t want to live on charity. I’ve never done that. I know it sounds awful, but I just don’t see the point of going on living. I simply don’t. Have I shocked you?’

I shook my head in denial, but she had. Not long after this a car came up the drive. It was an old Morris Oxford estate car with the half timbered effect at the back. It lurched to a halt.

‘The Jag had to go,’ said Freda laconically.

I might not have recognised Gordon as he got out of the car, had Freda not called to him. Like Freda he had lost weight so that his clothes hung loosely on him. The hair had greyed; his face was pale and he had shaved off his moustache, perhaps to avoid being recognised by creditors. But he greeted me with great warmth and we enjoyed half an hour of jokey conversation. It was almost like the old days.

Then, quite suddenly, a silence fell. I sensed that they were tired and didn’t want to talk any longer so I got up to go. They made a half-hearted attempt to keep me there, but I said I had to get back. ‘Well,’ said Freda. ‘You know where we are, so do just drop in any time. But give us a ring first.’ I said I would certainly come back.

The following week, which was my last at Stone Court, I tried several times to ring them, but their telephone had been cut off. In the end I decided to bicycle to Halton House and find out what had happened. It might be my last chance of seeing them.

The Morris Oxford was in the drive when I got there. It was about three in the afternoon, a dull day with the sky paper white. I rang and knocked several times but there was no reply. I walked onto the terrace and saw that one of the French windows was ajar. Entering the house, I was met with gloom and silence. There were signs that a packing-up operation had been started, then abandoned. A few sticks of furniture remained. Some pictures had been propped against a wall. A crowd of empty bottles were huddled in a corner, as if holding a melancholy meeting.

I walked through the sitting room into the hall where stood three half-filled packing cases. A glass lay smashed beside one of them. On the hall table was a vase and against it leaned a piece of white cardboard on which in red pencil was scrawled the words: DON’T GO UPSTAIRS.

I looked at the message and the message looked at me. Was I its intended recipient? Why should I not go upstairs? I do not know how I arrived at the conclusion that I should disobey the instruction but I did.

It was very quiet in the gallery and the door of Freda’s bedroom was open. Looking into the room from the gallery, I could not see the bed because it was behind the door and facing the window which looked out onto the back lawn of Halton House. In front of the window was Freda’s dressing table, bare except for the silver framed photograph of Michael which had been positioned so that it faced the bed directly instead of slanting inwards to one side as it usually did. The other photograph, of Freda herself, had been put face down on the floor beneath the table.

I went into the room. A man and a woman, fully dressed, were lying side by side on Freda’s bed. Their clothes were those of Gordon and Freda, but their faces were unrecognisable. They were dead white and their gaping mouths were wrinkled, lipless holes. I noticed that on the bedside table were two pairs of false teeth, together with two tumblers, some empty pill bottles and an empty bottle of gin.

As I took in this scene slowly I was at first no more than perplexed until I noticed their eyes. They had sunk so deeply back into their sockets that they were barely visible. They were little more than black holes, like those in the death mask I had seen staring at me from the gallery.

I only have the word of others for what happened next. Apparently Commander Tranting, who had been worried about Gordon and Freda and had come to check up on them, found me wandering in the garden of Halton House. He summoned the authorities, then took me back to his house where I stayed the night. It was he who told me that the Barrymores had committed suicide by taking an overdose and that the phenomenon of the white face and sunken eyes was a known symptom of barbiturate poisoning.

Others were indignant on my behalf against Gordon and Freda. ‘How selfish of them,’ they said. ‘How cruel when they knew he would go looking for them!’ But I was not angry with them because they had, after all, tried to warn me.

**

In the following years I pursued academic excellence with a fanaticism that troubled even my ambitious father. What drove me, I don’t exactly know. Many factors may have played their part, but I was conscious, whenever I thought about it, of a fear of the outside world. I was afraid that unless I applied myself I would not be able to control life and that its tides might take me where I did not want to go. It would be neat to conclude that this fear was connected with the fate of Freda and Gordon, but at the time all that seemed part of another life. I hardly ever thought about it, and whenever I began to I stopped myself.

It was after I had finished my final exams at Oxford, had got the required First, and was beginning to research for my doctoral thesis that the dam burst. I became possessed by a feeling of utter futility. I was afraid that even if I were to be offered an academic post I would be unable to take it up because I had no faith in learning, no faith in anything for that matter. I felt tired the whole time and I found it hard to distinguish between reality and my own dreams and visions. My mind created a wall of illusion between myself and the outside world. I called this state my ‘inside world’ and it contained visible, sometimes tangible horrors.

The worst of these horrors was the white face, the same black-eyed, lipless death mask which I had seen in the window of Halton House. There were days when I could not leave my flat in North Oxford in case I caught sight of the thing gaping at me through some window on the other side of the street. At night it was worse because then it got out from behind the windows and I would spot it peering at me over hedges or between bushes as I walked up the Banbury Road.