The Japanese Girl (27 page)

They returned to discussing
La Bête Humaine
, which Whiteleaf had seen thirty years ago and considered the best film about railways ever made. Roy had never seen it and wanted to. There were copies in France, and being in railways he might be able to pull a string or two. He also knew the proprietor of the local cinema, who, between alternate bingo nights, was always willing to risk a bit of something way-out. He preferred sex or horror films, but if the French film were offered to him to show for a couple of nights without rental charge he would certainly agree to show it.

But it would cost money to bring it over and to put it on. It was no good Roy trying to do anything unless he knew Uncle Julian would bear the cost. Uncle Julian was doubtful, discouraging: he'd want to know a lot more about what he was letting himself in for before he even considered it. They discussed it for a long time and came as near an argument as they ever got, Roy pressing and Whiteleaf hedging away.

After Roy had gone Agnes came in and settled him down for the night. It was diuretic pills in the morning and potassium pills at night, and she gave him these now and saw his inhaler was within reach, threw some slack coal on the fire, which kept it in most of the night but almost extinguished it as a provider of heat, and then stood by the bed, square and uncompromising, and asked him if he wanted anything more.

He said no and she kissed his forehead perfunctorily and left. It was eleven o'clock. He read for a few minutes and then put out the light and composed himself for sleep. The room and the house were very quiet. Roy and Agnes were separated from him by the bathroom and the box room and their movements could not be heard. In the distance a diesel train hooted. It was a lonely sound.

Then the basket chair creaked as if someone had just sat down in it.

TWO

‘I think,' said Dr Abrahams, ‘you might have stayed in another week. Are you moving about too much?'

‘No. Only once or twice a day, with my niece's help, just as you advised.'

‘He never has need to stir a finger otherwise,' said Agnes uncompromisingly.

‘Well, the electrocardiograms are satisfactory. But why aren't you sleeping?'

‘I do well enough when I get off, but it takes an hour or two to – compose myself.'

‘He sleeps in the afternoon,' Agnes said. ‘I expect that takes the edge off. I can
never
sleep at night if I have a nap after lunch.'

‘The breathing all right?'

‘No worse than usual. I always need the inhaler a few times.'

After the doctor had gone, Agnes came back and found Whiteleaf writing in his diary.

‘You shouldn't do that,' she said. ‘It tires you. Dr Abrahams was asking me if you were worried about something. I said not so far as I know.'

‘Not so far as I know either. Tell me, Agnes, about that basket chair. Roy says you bought it in a sale.'

Agnes looked rather peculiar. ‘Yes. Why? What's wrong with it?'

‘Nothing at all. But what sale?'

‘Oh, it was that big house about a mile out of Swindon. D'you remember it? No, you won't, I don't expect.'

‘D'you mean Furze Hall?'

‘No. Beyond that. There was a Miss Covent lived there, all by herself with only one servant. It had thirty-four rooms. Fantastic. She was eighty when she died.'

‘What made you go?'

‘Oh, it was advertised. Carol Elliot wanted a few things – you know, from down the road – so I went with her. It was an awful old place; she'd let it go to ruin, this Miss Covent; all the roofs leaked, I should think; it's being pulled down. Most of the furniture was junk but it went very cheap. I paid a pound for the chair and a pound for that bookcase in the hall and two pounds for four kitchen mats and –'

Agnes went on about her bargains and then switched to some other subject, which Whiteleaf ignored.

‘Did you know anything about it?' he asked presently. ‘About the house where you bought those things?'

‘The Covents' place? Well, of course, I'd never been
in
before. Hardly anyone had. It was like something out of Boris Karloff, I can tell you. The old lady must have been bats, living there alone. There was some story Carol Elliot was telling me about it but I didn't pay much attention.'

‘Ask her sometime.'

‘Carol? Yes, I'll ask her. But why?'

‘I'm interested in old places. You know my interests.'

‘Well, I never heard it was
haunted
, if that's what you mean. Don't you like the chair? I can take it out.'

‘No, leave it where it is. I like old things.'

‘Well, it's comfy, I can tell you that. I always enjoy sitting in it when I come to see you last thing.'

When she had gone Whiteleaf continued in his diary: ‘Recorded and authenticated ‘‘ possession'' of small items of furniture is relatively rare and has no reliable weight of testimony behind it such as the ‘‘possession'' of houses has. The poltergeist one accepts, because one has to accept it. Beyond that there is only reasonable cause to believe and reasonable cause to doubt. In the case of a chair …' He wrote no more that evening.

The following day he began a new entry. ‘Is this the hallucination of illness or the clearer perception of convalescence? It is certainly a very peculiar shape. That high rounded back. It is a half-way style, reminiscent of one of the old hooded hall chairs of the 18th century. Why does someone or something appear to sit in it every night when I am trying to go to sleep? And am I right in supposing sometimes that I can hear breathing and footsteps? Odd that in all these years of interest and study this should be the first possibly psychic event that has ever happened to me …'

The next evening Agnes said: ‘I saw Carol today. It is a funny story about the Covents. Of course she's lived here all her life and we've only been here ten years. She says it was before her time but her mother often spoke of it.'

‘Spoke of what?' Whiteleaf asked.

‘Well, it's not a very nice story. Uncle. It won't upset you to talk about it?'

‘I'm not made of cotton wool,' he said impatiently. ‘In any case, how can something that presumably happened years ago have any effect? I'm allowed to read the daily papers, aren't I?'

‘Yes, well, yes …' Agnes plucked at her lip. ‘ Well, Carol says they were a young married couple, the Covents, during World War One. He was in the Battle of the Somme and was blown up and hideously disfigured. Apparently spent a couple of years in hospital and they then let him out. I suppose plastic surgery wasn't much help in those days …'

‘No, it was in an experimental stage.'

‘So they hadn't done him any good. He was still terrible to look at, and when he came home he never went out of the house but used to sit by the fire all day reading and thinking. His wife used to go out and do all the shopping, etc., Carol's mother says, and that way she met another man and had an affair with him. Somehow or other Captain Covent discovered this, and it must have turned his brain because she suddenly stopped going shopping and everyone thought they had gone away …'

Whiteleaf felt his heart give a slight excited lurch. ‘Interesting.'

‘After a few weeks someone got suspicious and they broke into the house and there they were, both dead, one on either side of the empty fireplace. Apparently he'd tied her to a chair and then sat down opposite her and watched her starve to death. Then he cut his own throat. That's what the doctors said. It was a big sensation in the 'twenties.'

‘Very interesting,' said Whiteleaf.

‘Well, horrible I say. They hadn't any children so the property came to his eldest sister and she took it over and lived there until last year. I tell you the house would have given me the creeps without any funny stories.'

Silence fell and the door downstairs banged.

‘That's Roy,' said Agnes. ‘I'll get him to shift that chair tonight, just so that it won't worry you.'

‘Not at all,' said Whiteleaf. ‘Leave it just where it is.'

Agnes shivered. ‘Don't tell Roy. He's superstitious about these things.'

Whiteleaf shifted himself up the bed. ‘D'you realize I remember the First World War?'

‘Do you, Uncle? Yes, I suppose you do. But you'd be very young.'

‘I well remember celebrating the Armistice. I was thirteen at the time. It never occurred to me then that I should have to fight in another war myself.'

When she had gone downstairs to get Roy his tea, Whiteleaf wrote just one sentence in his diary. ‘I wonder if this chair, this basket chair was the one Captain Covent sat in? Or was it hers?'

THREE

That night, although he was still not sure about the breathing, he was quite certain about the footsteps. The creaking of the chair as someone sat in it began about ten minutes or so after he was left alone and went on for a little while with faint furtive creaks. They were very faint but very distinct as someone stirred in the chair. Then also quite distinctly there was the soft pad of footsteps, about six or seven, moving away from the chair towards the door. They did not reach the door. They stopped half-way and were heard no more. Presently the creaking died away.

It is surprising what tension is generated by the supernatural. One can write about it. One can attend spiritualist séances. One can even visit haunted houses and still remain detached, scientific, aloof. But in a silent bedroom, entirely alone, with only this wayward wandering spirit for company, Julian Whiteleaf felt himself screwing up to meet some crisis that he greatly feared but could not imagine. It was clearly not doing his health much good or aiding his recovery. The whole thing was strikingly interesting; but he would have to take care, to take great care, to find some means of rationalizing this experience so that he could regain his detachment. Only his diary helped.

‘Supposing,' he wrote, ‘that I am
not
the victim of a sick man's hallucination and that for some reason I have become clairaudient. (The ‘‘some reason'' could well be the rare combination of my hypersensitive perceptions during convalescence and the presence of a chair with such an evil aura, amounting to ‘‘possession''.) Supposing that, then is there any resolution or solution of the situation in which I find myself? Is there any
progress
in this nightly occurrence? Is there a likelihood that I may become clairvoyant too? (And in the circumstances would I wish to be? Hardly!) Why are there only six or seven steps, and why do they always move towards the door?'

That night there were exactly the same number of steps but they were quite audible now, a soft firm footfall, measured but fading at the usual spot.

Whiteleaf never kept his light on, but Agnes had lent him her electric clock, which had an illuminated face, so that when one's eyes were accustomed to the dark one could just see about the room. And tonight a pale blue flame was flickering in the fire, so this helped. But sitting up in bed, Whiteleaf wished there had been no such fire, for the flames conjured up movements about the old chair. He thought: insanity is not evil, yet it so often wears the same guise. Covent must have been insane, driven insane by his own mutilated face rather than by jealousy of his wife. Only an insane man could tie a woman to a chair and watch her starve to death. I must examine that chair more closely. There may even be signs of where the rope has frayed the frame.

It was four o'clock in the morning before he fell asleep.

FOUR

Dr Abrahams said to Agnes: ‘Your uncle is not making the progress that I'd hoped for. His blood pressure is up a little and his breathing is not too satisfactory. If this goes on we'll get him back in hospital.'

‘It's just as you like,' said Agnes. ‘I always help him when he gets out of bed, and we're careful he doesn't overdo it. I keep the fire going all day and night to help his asthma.'

‘Of course he uses that inhaler too much: I've told him to go easy on it, but it would be unwise to take it away; he has come to depend on it. One is between the devil and the deep sea.'

‘I'll watch him,' said Agnes. ‘But he
is
difficult. Strong-minded. He'd fight before he went back to hospital.'

‘That's what I'm afraid of,' said Abrahams.

While they were downstairs talking, Whiteleaf was up and examining the chair, as he had done once before when left to himself. As Roy had said, it was a strangely heavy chair for one made principally of cane. The framework was of a thin rounded wood like bamboo but enormously hard. You couldn't make any indentation in it with a fruit knife. There was a number of stains on the seat under the cushion: they could have been bloodstains: impossible without forensic equipment to tell. Whiteleaf had never sat in the chair and did not want to do so now. He felt he might have been sitting on something that should not be there. Only Agnes sat on it, in the evenings, and he had been tempted more than once to ask her not to.

He hastily climbed back into bed as he heard her feet on the stairs.

Later he wrote: ‘ I get the feeling that someone or something is trying to escape. To escape from the bondage of the chair. (Not surprising, perhaps, in view of its history!) But something more than just that – otherwise why the steps? It's as if the body rotted away long ago but the spirit is still attached to the scene of its suffering and still striving to get away. The footsteps always move towards the door. If they ever reached the door, would something go out? This I could accept more readily were this the actual room in which the tragedy took place. Yet perhaps in the room in which this
did
happen, there
were
only eight steps from the chair to door. Perhaps after the tragedy the chair was not moved for years and this ‘‘possession'', this spirit, became bound for ever to a routine of ‘‘escape'' each night. Even so it does
not
escape: it repeats for ever the ghastly ritual. Could it now in this new situation really escape for ever if the footsteps could reach this door? How to encourage them?'