The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (29 page)

While she was wondering what to do she heard voices underneath the window.

“We don’t seem to be very lucky here just now, Rundle,” said Mr. Ampleforth.

“No, sir.”

There was a pause. Then Mr. Ampleforth spoke again.

“He’s still breathing, I think.”

“Yes, sir, he is, just.”

“You take his head and I’ll take his feet, and we’ll get him into the house.”

Something began to stir in Maggie’s mind. Rundle replied:

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, I don’t think we ought to move him. I was told once by a doctor that if a man’s had a fall or anything it’s best to leave him lying.”

“I don’t think it’ll matter if we’re careful.”

“Really, sir, if you’ll take my advice—”

There was a note of obstinacy in Rundle’s voice. Maggie, almost beside herself with agitation, longed to fling open the window and cry “Bring him in! Bring him in!” But her hand seemed paralysed and her throat could not form the words.

Presently Mr. Ampleforth said:

“You know we can’t let him stay here. It’s beginning to rain.”

(Bring him in! Bring him in!)

“Well, sir, it’s your responsibility . . .”

Maggie’s heart almost stopped beating.

“Naturally I don’t want to do anything to hurt the poor chap.”

(Oh, bring him in! Bring him in!)

The rain began to patter on the pane.

“Look here, Rundle, we must get him under cover.”

“I’ll fetch that bit of wing, sir, and put over him.”

(Bring him in! Bring him in!)

Maggie heard Rundle pulling something that grated on the gravel path. The sound ceased and Mr. Ampleforth said:

“The very thing for a stretcher, Rundle! The earth’s so soft, we can slide it under him. Careful, careful!” Both men were breathing hard. “Have you got your end? Right.” Their heavy, measured footfalls grew fainter and fainter.

The next thing Maggie heard was the motor-car returning with the doctor. Not daring to go out, and unable to sit down, she stood, how long she did not know, holding her bedroom door ajar. At last she saw the nurse coming towards her.

“The patient’s a little better, Miss Winthrop. The doctor thinks he’ll pull through now.”

“Which patient?”

“Oh, there was never any hope for the other poor fellow.”

Maggie closed her eyes.

“Can I see Antony?” she said at last.

“Well, you may just peep at him.”

Antony smiled at her feebly from the bed.

Happy Hour

Ian Watson

With an abrupt loud clatter the steel slats of the exhaust fan exploded open, making our hearts lurch. Martin mimed quick pistol shots at it.

“Pung! Pung! Gotcha.”

That fan was set just beneath the bowed, beamed ceiling of the bar in the Roebuck. The contraption was at least twenty years out of date. It didn’t purr softly like a modern fan. It exploded open, showing its teeth, and gulped at the atmosphere. One of the historic stones of this pub – built in the reign of Good Queen Bess, so a sign on the wall boasted – had been removed so that the thing could be inserted. The actual mechanism was hidden inside the wall. When the fan was in repose, all that showed was a slatted cream panel one foot square lying flush with the cream plasterwork. You hardly noticed it, forgot all about it – until suddenly the Xtractall opened its mouth as if by its own volition; until the flat panel became a dozen razor lips spaced an inch apart, through which fuggy air was sucked into its throat.

The fan throbbed lustily, sucking Charlotte’s cigarette smoke and my own cigar smoke into it.

“Does it have a built-in smoke detector?” I wondered.

“We could ask what’s-his-name. Our host.” Jenny nodded toward the deserted bar counter.

“Host” was somewhat of a misnomer. The landlord was a quiet, wispy chap with little by way of personality. He smiled amiably, but he was no conversationalist; and frankly we liked it this way. Right now he would be round in the restaurant annex neatening the array of silver and wineglasses on the tables. The Roebuck was one of those few country pubs that opened fairly promptly at six of an evening, but it relied for its main trade on the gourmet menu from about half-past seven till ten. It wasn’t much of a hangout for locals and yokels.

To be sure, now that the licensing hours had been liberalized, the place could have stayed open all day long. Yet what rural pub would bother to? We were lucky to have found the Roebuck.

Jenny and I, Charlotte and Martin, and Alice (who was special) all commuted to London and back by way of big, glassy Milton Keynes Station. Charlotte and Martin had bought a sizable thatched cottage in a couple of acres this side of Buckingham. Jenny and I were based in a different little village outside of Stony Stratford, in a barn conversion. Alice lived . . . somewhere in the vicinity. Alone? Or otherwise? Alice was our delicious enigma. Apparently she was in publishing. Webster-Freeman: art and oriental-wisdom volumes, shading into the outright occult. I sometimes fantasized her dancing naked around a bonfire or homemade altar along with other like spirits, firelight or candlelight winking between her legs. If such was the case, she had never tried to recruit us (and, curiously, my fantasies along these lines never provoked an erection). We were merely one slice of her life on Friday evenings: a slice lasting an hour – twice as long when we all dined at the Roebuck once a month.

Why had we been so honored by Alice? Perhaps she was lonely under her capable, gorgeous facade. Perhaps we were neutrals with whom she could be friends without obligations or ties.

I myself worked for an oil company and was in charge of Butadiene, a gas used as fuel and also in the manufacture of synthetic rubbers. Since I was on the contracts rather than the chemistry side, the job called for some foreign travel – quick trips to Eastern Europe, Mexico, Japan, from which I returned tired out – but otherwise my career was ho-hum. I assumed I would be with the same mob for the rest of my working life, slowly advancing. In our company salaries were somewhat pinched to start with (and indeed to continue with!) until the final five years, when suddenly you were rolling in money and could practically write yourself cheques. Thus my masters assured staff loyalty.

My wife, Jenny, was office manager for an airline, which gave us free tickets once a year to hot, exotic places where I didn’t need to sit haggling in an office. Jenny was a short, trim blonde who wore smartly tailored suits and lavish bows like big silken napkins tucked into her neckline.

Burly, early-balding Martin was an architect, and his spouse, Charlotte, willowy and auburn, was a senior secretary to an export-import firm called, uninventively, Exportim, which managed to sound like some Soviet trade bureau.

And Alice was . . . Alice.

Weekdays (except Fridays) Martin and Charlotte and Jenny and I all drove our own cars to MK Station, since we might need to work late and catch different trains home. Every Friday, however, my wife and I shared a car; so did Martin and his wife. On that day nothing would make us miss the same return train and our wind-down drink with Alice at the Roebuck. Needless to say, our minor contribution toward car-sharing in no way relieved the parking pressure at MK. By seven-fifteen in the morning every weekday the station car parks were full up, and the central reservations and traffic islands were becoming crowded with vehicles. The new city in the Buckinghamshire countryside boasted a fine network of roads, but where parking was concerned, the planners had cocked up. Pressure, pressure. No wonder we looked forward to our Friday evenings. Or our once-a-month dinner.

I screwed my cigar butt into one ashtray at the exact moment when Charlotte stubbed out her Marlboro in another – as if she and I had been reproached by the extractor fan for our filthy habits. We glanced at one another and burst out laughing. The fan thumped shut.

“I heard this in Hungary,” I said. “There’s a new Russian wristwatch on the market, triumph of Soviet technology. It’ll do absolutely everything: time zones, phases of the moon, built-in calculator. It only weighs a few ounces. ‘So what’s the snag?’ asks this fellow. ‘Oh,’ says his informant, ‘it’s just the two suitcases of batteries you need to carry round with it . . .’ ”

Then Alice told a dirty joke.

“This British couple went for a holiday in the States to tour the national parks. Well, in the first park they made friends with a skunk. They adored the skunk so much they took it with them in their trailer to the next park, then the next. Come the end of their holiday, they could hardly bear to be parted from the animal. ‘I wish we could take it home,’ said the husband, ‘but how could we avoid the quarantine laws?’ ‘I know,’ said his wife, ‘I’ll stick the skunk inside my knickers, and we’ll smuggle it in that way.’ ‘Great idea,’ agreed her husband, ‘but, um, what about the smell?’ The wife shrugged and sighed. ‘If it dies, it dies.’ ”

Alice was good that way. She was incredibly desirable – tall, slim, long legs, wonderful figure, that mass of raven hair, olive skin, dark broody eyes – but she easily defused any sexual tensions that might have undermined our little group. Lust from the men; or jealousy from the ladies. Charlotte had first fallen into conversation with Alice on the homeward train, and introduced her to the rest of us at journey’s end. We rarely sat together on the train itself. Such a rush to catch it. Carriages would be crowded; and we all had work to keep us busy.

Alice refrained from letting us know her home address or phone number – perhaps wisely, in case Martin or I tried to see her privately. Nor, in fact, had she ever asked about our own homes. A tacit agreement prevailed, not to know. Meanwhile, she certainly made our Friday evening group react together. She was our catalyst. Without her, we would have been just two everyday couples. With her, we felt special: a new sort of unit, a sparkling fivesome.

Gleefully Martin took over the baton of joke-telling.

“The mother superior of this convent school invited a Battle of Britain hero to address her girls,” he said with relish. “The flying ace told them, ‘I was at eight thousand feet in my Spitfire. I saw a fokker to the left of me. There was another fokker to the right of me. I looked up, and the sky was full of fokkers.’ ‘I should explain, girls,’ interrupted the mother superior, ‘that the Fokker-Wolf was a Second World War German fighter plane.’ ‘That’s quite right, Mother,’ said the airman, ‘but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts.’ ”

Though the jokes themselves might have seemed silly – it’s the way they’re told, isn’t it? – we excelled ourselves in wit and amity that evening . . . until the pub cat came a-calling on us. This mog was a scruffy ginger specimen, which I had seen the landlord shooing outdoors on a couple of occasions. With the unerring instinct of pussies, it made straight for Alice, to rub against her leg. She drew away.

“I loathe cats. I’m allergic.”

“Gid away!” Martin flapped and clapped his hands. The mog retreated a little, not particularly deterred.