An English Ghost Story (24 page)

Kirsty was screaming. And so was he.

Tim was still moving. He tried to get away. Steven made a grab with his injured hand. As he made a fist around a fold of Tim’s T-shirt, liquid agony jolted his whole arm.

His son was terrified.

And well he might be. If ever a boy deserved a sound, pants-down smacking, Tim was that soldier.

Kirsty dashed in and swept Tim up in her arms, hugging and sobbing and kissing. He still clung to his blessed catapult as if it were a sacred relic that could protect him from the storms of his father’s rage.

Steven was too angry to be relieved.

He got up and saw his trousers were marked by Tim’s muddy heel-prints. He tongued around inside his mouth and found a chip of enamel like a piece of grit. One of his front teeth had a corner snapped off. His blood-red left hand was swelling to the size of a football. Other parts of his body were jabbed by pains.

The After Lights-Out Gang stood by the house, bewildered by the show. Worse than any of his injuries was that he had to bottle the rage that wanted to explode from behind his eyes and pour in a rain of fire over his misbegotten son. The audience meant Steven couldn’t let off steam the way he would have if the family were alone. This called for serious effing and blinding.

What had Tim been thinking of?

* * *

T
he boy was safe. Kirsty gave thanks and hugged Tim closer than she had since before he could walk. He had come out of her and her responsibility was to protect him.

The tree was coming down. Steven, the tool-using man, would be renting a chainsaw and the rotten tree would be ten years’ worth of firewood. It had nearly killed her darling and she was not going to let it stand.

In the house, the telephone rang. It connected to a fire-bell mounted over the kitchen door, so it could be heard throughout the orchard.

What now?

Kirsty checked Tim’s face and hands, his limbs and trunk, frisking him for hidden wounds. The boy was white and quiet, startled out of himself. He probably couldn’t believe he’d lived through the fall. His catapult, unbroken, was still firmly in his grip.

He looked up at the branches. She tried to get him to look at her, but his gaze tugged upwards, eyes jittering from side to side as he scanned for something. She looked up too and saw a green face.

No, just leaves and a knot of branches.

The after-image of the face stayed with her.

That telephone jangled her nerves.

She hugged Tim close and shouted to Jordan to get the phone and get rid of whoever it was.

Her daughter stepped inside the house.

Tim tried to say something. Spittle came out of his mouth. She wiped it away with her wrist.

‘I think my hand’s broken,’ said Steven.

That didn’t matter. Her husband would live. If he didn’t, she could get another. Tim was irreplaceable. If she let him come to harm, she was worth nothing.

‘It’s just a sprain,’ she said, not looking. ‘Put cold water on it.’

The shadows of the tree seemed to crawl over Kirsty’s skin, tickling like a hundred thousand insects. The shadows of leaves were like dark blemishes on Tim’s face. She picked him up, his arms around her neck, her arm under his bum, and carried him out of the shade, holding him up to the sunlight as if late afternoon warmth could wash away the hurt.

There were people by the house. For a moment, she couldn’t remember who they were.

Those moments replaying in her mind – her son losing his grip, plunging through empty air, limbs waving – blotted everything else. It took a second or two for her to recall her own name, her immediate circumstances. Her life was divided in two by the shock. She saw reality for the first time, understanding she was on a high-wire without a net. How could she ever take a step again, knowing what might happen? A hundred feet below them were the jagged rocks.

Steven was still in the shadow, right hand clamped around his left wrist as if his left hand were a dead bird. She looked above her husband but couldn’t see the green face. Still, she was afraid for him.

‘Come out, Steven,’ she said.

He didn’t understand.

‘Away from the tree,’ she insisted.

He looked above him. She clenched inside, certain something like a green monkey would fall on his face, limbs and tail wrapping around his head and shoulders, teeth and fingers chewing for his eyes and tongue.

‘
Now
,’ she said, as if he were her child.

Steven stumbled out into the light.

The tree waved in a wind, sighing. She had beaten it, rescued her men from the thing. When it was sawed down, she’d make sure the roots were dug up and burned. Nothing would remain, not one apple pip.

‘How is he?’ Steven asked.

She would remember for ever that she couldn’t trust Steven to look after the children. She had to be certain at all times that she knew where they were. If she didn’t watch over them, no one else would, no one else could.

(Such a burden, such a distraction, the children.)

Steven reached out, with his good hand. She took Tim out of his way, ignoring the hurt in her husband’s eyes. Just now, she didn’t want him near her.

Tim took his face off her shoulder. There was a shallow graze on his cheek and forehead, like the mark of a twiggy finger.

‘Mum, Dad,’ he said, ‘they’re not our friends.’

Her blood was ice.

Just behind Tim’s flushed, streaked face was a paler, calmer mask. She saw him dead and alive at the same time.

‘Not our friends.’

Not
his
friends, perhaps.

She put Tim down and stood away. She wasn’t sure he wasn’t dead. He was like Steven and Jordan, set against her. He had always been their secret weapon, smallest and most demanding, yet least rewarding, of the FU. He had come along unexpectedly – Tim, not Jordan, had made her give in to Steven’s pressure and get married, abandoning her law course – and cemented the hated transformation of Kirsty, the individual with potential for personal growth, into Mrs Naremore, the doormat of all time.

Now Tim – if this was even Tim, and not something wearing his shape – wanted her to reject even the magic.

She was over her fear for her family.

* * *

‘
T
he Hollow,’ said Jordan, into the phone.

‘Mrs Naremore?’ asked a man’s voice, familiar.

‘This is Jordan. Mum’s…’ What to say? This was no time to give details. ‘…caught up in something.’

‘
Jordan
,’ said the caller, with loathing.

The voice slipped into her ear and coursed around her body, like a shudder. ‘Jordan Naremore,’ the voice insisted. ‘I’m looking at a letter. A letter from you.’

The Summer Room was dark. It had lost the light.

‘Who is this?’ she asked.

‘He read your letter.’

It was Rick’s dad. He didn’t sound himself. There was no distortion on the line. It was as if he were speaking clearly for the first time.

‘My boy’s dead,’ he said. ‘
Bitch
.’

Click. Dead air.

She held the receiver, needing to say something, knowing no one would hear. She couldn’t put the phone down. Her arms were iron, her stomach was water.

Through the French windows, she saw Mum and Dad with Tim. She was cut off from her family. The visitors were in the way, keeping out the light.

‘My boy’s dead.
Bitch
.’

Rick. Dead.
Bitch
.

Dead.

She barely remembered her Gran, Dad’s mum, who’d died before Tim was born. She had just been a presence, gone without making an impression. Last year, Melanie Staples, a girl she knew slightly from school, was killed in a fire caused by faulty wiring. For days afterward, Jordan had only been able to think of Melanie, someone she’d once sat three desks away from in Geography, getting used to the idea of Melanie not having a future, not being even a peripheral part of Jordan’s life. She hadn’t especially liked Melanie, who was friends with some girls who gave her a hard time, but hadn’t really had anything against her. It had been a matter of indifference to Jordan whether Melanie was in the room or not, but for a while she found it hard to continue everyday life. She kept remembering that someone she knew couldn’t drink tea, walk to school, do homework, watch television… and wouldn’t ever do those things again. Days after, Melanie had a dreamlike quality she’d expended thousands of words in her now-abandoned diary trying to define. When Rick made a joke about Melanie frying, she broke up with him for two days, unable to believe his callousness, eventually writing it off as just bravado.

Now Rick.

Letter. Dead.
Bitch
.

She fumbled with the cordless receiver, not cradling it properly. She was in a standing-up swoon.

The only boy she had ever made love with was dead.

Secrets she had shared were hers alone now.

Their arguments would never be settled.

It was over.

Everything was over.

What to do?

Suddenly, the Summer Room was full of people and shadows, all talking at once. The words were a babble, an aural blur like static. She had lost the ability to distinguish between voices.

* * *

K
irsty saw Steven pick up the telephone. He listened briefly, heard nothing and put it back in its cradle. Jordan had been careless. She stood in the middle of the room, eyes unfocused.

Teazle Society members fussed.

They were solicitous. Was she all right?

Of course she was. It was her family they should worry about. All of them.

‘What was he doing up there?’ asked Mrs Twomey.

Trying to get attention, she thought. Undoing any chance his poor old mum might have of making even a small space in her life for herself.

The telephone rang again. This time, Steven picked it up. Jordan must have been unable to make sense.

So many distractions. People around when she wanted to be alone. There seemed more visitors than she had counted. As if the shadows of the Society were a separate gang.

Was there a polite way of getting rid of them?

In the end, she’d wind up shouting at them to sod off.

Even Harriet Hazzard, the carer, was no use now.

Steven nodded, listening to the caller, mumbled, held the receiver away from his ear, flinching from tinny shrieking at the other end of the line, and hung up.

Jordan looked at her father with horror. She covered her face with her hands and ran out of the room.

Kirsty clung to Tim, protecting him.

‘Bad news, old fellow?’ asked Wing-Godfrey.

‘Uh, yes,’ Steven said. ‘Afraid I’m going to have to cut short the tour.’

Wing-Godfrey was stricken. Mrs Bullitt yelped with disappointment. The others were similarly aghast. Children told there would be no more ice cream. Ever.

This was wrong. She had been wrong. If anything, Wing-Godfrey’s people should stay and her family should leave, trot off to hospital or something and let her get on with it. The outsiders understood the Hollow better, understood what Kirsty wanted to make of the place.

‘Tim’s fine,’ she said, forcing a smile that made her cheeks hurt. ‘We shouldn’t be rude because of a little tumble.’

They hadn’t seen the inside of the house yet, really. There were sacred sites to visit. Weezie’s nooks, Louise’s study, Louise’s room. The collection of Teazle memorabilia.

Steven’s face screwed up. Whatever he wanted to say, he couldn’t get it out.

It mustn’t be very important.

Tim’s fingers unhooked from her blouse and hair.

They’re not our friends
, he had said.

She looked at the nodding Society members. Loving Louise had kept them children at heart. This was their special treat. Only a monster would withhold it.

It was time to be firm. She was mistress of the Hollow.

‘Shall we look at the East Tower first?’

* * *

H
e hadn’t got anything coherent out of Rick’s father, beyond bald facts. The boy was dead and he was blaming Jordan. There had been a letter. And something about a crash, on a bike or in a car. He could not stop thinking of what he had seen through the tree telescope. The dancing stones, the figure thrown into the fire. He had wished the boy dead, as flatly as that. Rick had hurt his daughter and Steven had focused his hatred on him. He had forgotten the sort of house he lived in, hadn’t imagined the Hollow might take him seriously and do something about his wish.

After everything else, he had no doubt that the Hollow could do it. Powered up by his desires, it could strike across the country, executing his wishes.

Be careful what you wish for.

He must think of Jordan. This would be dreadful for her. To be shouted at by the man – he’d been incoherent when ranting at Steven – must have been a profound shock. With this on top of her breakdown this morning and the scene under the tree, the poor girl must be wrung out.

‘We can look in on the study first,’ Kirsty said to the After Lights-Out Gang. ‘Where Louise wrote. It’s almost unchanged, except for Steven’s things.’

Kirsty and the Society were like a television on in the background. He caught a few words out of context and mixed them with the rising swirl of fear overtaking his mind.

‘Then, if my daughter will let us, we can peek in on Weezie’s room.’

No. He mustn’t let that happen.

‘Best not,’ he croaked, sub-audibly.

Kirsty and the After Lights-Out Gang flowed towards the East Tower. Kirsty even took Tim along, leading him solemnly by the hand. The Summer Room was empty but Steven didn’t feel alone. The telephone rang again, assaulting his strained nerves. He pulled the jack out of the wall. The noise shut off but persisted in his head. No, not in his head; in the kitchen and up in their bedroom, where there were extensions. The phone in his office and the car phone were on different numbers.

A spasm of dislike for Rick’s father overtook him. They’d met a few times. He seemed a better sort than his son, separated from his wife and struggling to pay for everything. He was boring about some odd hobby horse – fishing? Portugal? Real tennis? – and had a succession of short-lived, unattractive, much younger girlfriends. Just now, Steven had no sympathy to spare. He had yet to cope with his own terror and guilt and would then have to deal with Jordan’s cobweb of complexes. Rick’s Dad would have to get by on his own, or not at all.