Dorothy Eden (60 page)

‘Yes, ducky, that cupboard. I’ll go up and take a look at it right away.’

She came back soon enough.

‘It’s a whole wardrobe,’ she said. ‘You can step right inside it.’

‘I know. There are shelves for toys, and the children’s clothes hang in the middle.’

‘That’s right. There isn’t anything there to worry about. All the toys are harmless things, nothing to frighten Nicky now that doll has gone. Certainly the cupboard is big enough for someone to hide in, but who is going to be silly enough to do that?’

‘Who indeed?’ said Brigit. ‘Well, that’s that. Nicky is just being too imaginative. His father has always said so. We’ll have to cure him of it.’

‘That’s right,’ said Nurse Ellen cheerfully. ‘Time for your nap, ducky.’ She was humming as she smoothed the sheets. Then she exclaimed, ‘Oh, my God! Now I’m doing it.’ She had broken off half way through ‘Darling Clementine’. ‘Is that wretched tune going to be the theme song in this house?’

S
ARAH CAME BACK FROM THE
park being a dog. Aunt Annabel had found not the starved tabby she sought but a black kitten, plump and playful, and simply miles from home, she said, but of course she would advertise it, and if no owner turned up perhaps Brigit would like it. It would bring her luck. Although Renoir would be simply furious, he hated kittens of all colours.

Even Nicky had pink in his cheeks. In response to Brigit’s question he admitted that they had had fun catching the kitten and that Clementine hadn’t been there that afternoon.

‘It’s nicer without her,’ he said.

‘Of course it is, darling. You forget all about her.’

Then Prissie came home and she, too, was bright-eyed and bright-cheeked.

‘I’ve got simply heavenly material for a dress,’ she said. ‘May I show it to you?’

She unwrapped the parcel and spread the brilliant peacock-coloured silk over the bed. Brigit looked at it, then slowly at Prissie.

‘That’s the colour my mother is wearing in her portrait.’

‘I know. That’s why I chose it. I thought it was so heavenly.’

The black kitten on Brigit’s bed pounced at the brightly-coloured silk. Catching it, Brigit said rather stiffly:

‘What is the dress for, Prissie?’

‘Guy wants to take me to dinner. And I hadn’t a thing to wear.’

‘Oh,’ said Brigit slowly. Was the sudden pang she felt envy because she couldn’t put on a pretty dress and go dining and dancing? That Guy should be attracted by Prissie was a very natural thing. She was gay and full of light chatter, and he, lately, had grown even more quiet and secretive. Hadn’t she wished he could find a nice girl to make him happy and light-hearted? Surely Prissie was exactly the answer. Except that her acquisitive notions and her love of luxury would blend only too well with the Templar traits, and would this be altogether wise?

‘Guy needs cheering up,’ Prissie was continuing. ‘He works too hard and he looks awfully thin. A night out will do him good.’ She glanced at Brigit. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mrs Gaye?’

‘What you do in your spare time is your own business, Prissie.’ Then, regretting the slight coldness of her tone, she said, ‘You really have taken us on as a family, haven’t you? Me helpless, the children dependent on you, Guy needing cheering up, though goodness knows why.’

Prissie’s face sparkled with her wide spontaneous smile.

‘But I love it, Mrs Gaye. Truly.’

‘I believe you actually do,’ said Brigit. Then suddenly she was gay herself, because Prissie seemed so excited at the prospect of going out with Guy, and therefore could not be cherishing too much secret affection for Fergus. Tell that brother of mine to come and see me. He’s scarcely been near me since I’ve been ill.’

Guy, no doubt at Prissie’s behest, came in after dinner that evening. It was true that he had got even thinner than usual. His face seemed drawn, and his eyes didn’t quite meet Brigit’s. Has he done something wrong? flashed through Brigit’s mind. All her life she had been afraid for Guy because he had inherited so many of the Templar weaknesses, without the saving grace of the dashing impudence and confidence that Uncle Saunders had. If Guy were found out in a wrong deed, Brigit realized, he would have no courage.

Now he worked in a stockbroker’s, a position Uncle Saunders had obtained for him. Had he been gambling? Brigit wondered. Was he in debt and afraid to tell Uncle Saunders, who could be terrifying in his wrath?

‘Hullo, Guy,’ Brigit said lightly. ‘I hear, you and Prissie are having a night out.’

‘Any objections?’ Guy flashed at her.

‘Of course I haven’t. Prissie’s charming, and I should think would be great fun to take out. Don’t be so prickly.’

Guy smiled, a little shamefacedly.

‘Sorry, Biddy. I’m touchy these days.’

‘You certainly are. What have you been up to? You’re terribly thin.’

‘Working too hard,’ he said quickly.

‘Guy—now don’t jump down my throat—you’re not in debt, are you? You’re not worried about money?’

At first it seemed that he was going to lash out at her again. But he controlled himself, and gave his slow rather charming smile.

‘I’m always worried about that. I’ve got to practically exist on my salary, you know. It seems so damn silly while Uncle Saunders sits on the fleshpots. After all, half of them should be ours.’

‘I imagine they’ll all be ours one day,’ Brigit said wearily. ‘For my part you’re welcome to the lot. You know I’ve always hated the Templar money.’

‘You must take after father. I don’t. I’m all Templar. I long to have lashings of cash.’

‘Then you have a willing confederate in Prissie,’ Brigit said dryly. ‘She has similar ambitions. I don’t know whether she will be good for you after all.’ She added, ‘Is that really all that’s wrong, Guy? Shortage of money?’

He gave her his quick uneasy glance.

‘What do you mean, wrong? There’s nothing wrong at all.’ He smiled crookedly again. ‘Well, that money won’t cure.’

Money! It was a topic of absorbing interest in this household. This was the day of the week that Uncle Saunders was expected to hand over the housekeeping money, but since he had developed this latest elephantine joke of hiding it, the evening developed into a wild scramble, with Aunt Annabel, Mrs Hatchett, and the maid, Lorna, darting from room to room searching, while Uncle Saunders followed them ponderously, bellowing gleefully, ‘Cold! Colder!’ then reluctantly, ‘Warm now. A little warmer. No, cold again. Ten minutes to go. Come along, Annabel, you’re expert enough at catching your deuced cats. Surely you can ferret out a little bit of money.’

Aunt Annabel protested, ‘Oh, Saunders, you are exasperating. This is all so childish!’

‘Is it in the bedrooms this time, sir?’ inquired Mrs Hatchett.

‘No, no. I play fair. Bedrooms out of bounds. It’s on this floor.’ Uncle Saunders began to whistle gaily, and Brigit could visualize him, his face flushed, his pale blue eyes protruding with the fun and excitement he was having, his thick lips hanging open in a pleasurable smile. His heavy footsteps went tramp, tramp, tramp from one room to the other after the scurrying women. He would be dropping cigar ash down his waistcoat and over the carpet, while he held his large gold watch in one hand, consulting it repeatedly.

‘Five more minutes!’ he announced. ‘If I win this week I’ve got a very nice parcel of gold mining shares sorted out. Very cheap. Should show a hundred per cent profit. Wouldn’t that be worth starving one week for?’

‘You, too, will starve, my dear,’ Aunt Annabel pointed out.

‘I’ll eat at my club, ha, ha! It’s your deuced cats you’re worrying about, not yourself. No, no, my dear, I told you the sideboard was cold, ten minutes ago. Ah ha, Lorna’s getting warm. Very warm indeed. Oh, no! No, not that flower pot, my dear. That—oh, she’s smelt it out, the little rat. Yes, there it is. Dig it out of the earth. Shake it clean.’

‘Oh, Saunders!’ Aunt Annabel cried. ‘My hyacinths! You’ll have ruined the bulbs!’

‘Money doesn’t ruin anything, my dear. Yes, there it is. Count it. Divide it up. Turn it into butter and eggs and floor-polish and cats’ meat. Watch it disappear. If it had been invested in my gold shares it would have come back a hundred times. But there you are! All this passion for food and household goods. You women! You’ll never learn to appreciate money.’

His mournful voice, decreasing in volume, faded away. The house settled down to silence again. Nurse Ellen, in Brigit’s room, drawing the curtains and putting out the lights, said, ‘Well! How he likes to liven things up,’ and smiled at Brigit and said, ‘No burglars, no ghosts tonight. Sleep well, ducky.’

Upstairs on the top floor Prissie was interrupted in her writing by Nicky, who was wakeful, asking for a drink of water. She went to the bathroom to get it, and when she came back Nicky had got out of bed and was standing by the table concentratedly trying to read what she had written.

‘Love-ly seeing you today,’ he read laboriously. ‘But it’s so odd a-bout the an-gel.’

‘Nicky!’ Prissie exclaimed peremptorily. ‘Don’t you know it’s very bad manners to read other people’s letters?’

Nicky shrank back. She had spoken sharply, and lately he couldn’t bear sharp voices. They made him feel as if pins were sticking into him.

‘I was only seeing if I could read,’ he muttered.

Prissie set down the glass of water. She picked up the half-finished letter and put it on the mantelpiece. Then she spoke in her usual soft kind voice. ‘So you were, darling. But you mustn’t practise on people’s private things. That’s very bad.’

‘Yes,’ Nicky whispered obediently. He sipped some of the water, and his mind went back with curiosity to what he had just read. ‘Did you see an angel today?’ he asked interestedly.

‘An angel! You mean—Oh, no, my aunt had a nice dream about one. She’s very old and she dreams things like that. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘Like my dreams about Clementine?’

‘A bit. Now off to bed with you, and no more calling out. I’m going to put your light out and you have to go to sleep.’

‘Yes,’ said Nicky again obediently. He did feel sleepy now, and was sure that he would cuddle down at once into that warm friendly world of sleep.

He did, too. He must have slept for hours and hours. But it was still dark when he awoke, and the cackling voice was in the cupboard again. It was saying, ‘Nicky, listen to me! Nicky, if you tell lies about Clementine again, even once again, I will know. I will know, ha ha!’

The voice, ending in that croaking laugh, was indescribably frightening. Nicky cowered rigidly beneath the blankets. He wanted to draw them over his ears but he couldn’t bring himself to move his hands. The tip of his nose was frozen, the hair felt stiff on his head.

‘It’s all lies, Nicky!’ came the voice again. ‘You know it is.’

Before this he had heard the voice crackling in laughter in the night. But this was the first time it had said actual words. He was so petrified with terror, expecting to see the cupboard open and the small black witch-like shape of the doll advancing upon him, that he could scarcely breathe.

‘Remember!’ the voice was saying. ‘Remember!’

Downstairs the moon shone on Brigit’s face again, but it was barred with clouds tonight, and anyway it had not woken her. She had been awake. She had scarcely slept at all. No voices or other sounds, beyond an occasional soft scurry from the cats overhead, disturbed her. The house was silent. If Mrs Hatchett’s ghost were prowling about it was doing so noiselessly. There was nothing to keep her wakeful. Yet she remained intensely wakeful, and deep inside her that cold fear was stirring. And it was not now fear about her physical condition, but another fear, unnamed and unexplainable, like a ghostly finger on her shoulder…

‘Nothing will happen while I’m away,’ Fergus had said.

Even as she remembered his reassuring words Brigit imagined she heard a faint stirring in the direction of the fireplace, then, a second later there was no doubt about the sound of hoarse breathing. Brigit raised her head and looked intently into the indistinct shape of the fireplace. There was nothing to see, only the mouth of the chimney a square of deeper blackness than the surrounding tiles. The sound had stopped now. It hadn’t been Nurse Ellen because tonight she was sleeping in her bed in the dressing-room next door. Brigit had insisted that she do so. She could ring, she said, if she wanted anything.

But she wouldn’t ring just because she imagined she heard breathing in the fireplace. It was the wind, sending breathy gusts down the chimney. Was there a wind? There was no rustle of leaves outside the window.

Her heart still beating violently as much from her premonition of danger as from what she thought she had heard, Brigit lay back. It
couldn’t
have been anything. She was as bad as Nicky who imagined someone dwelt in the big dark cupboard in his room. But Nicky was only a child. She at least was old enough to know better.

‘Silly!’ came the small throaty voice from the chimney. ‘You think you are yourself. But you’re not. You’re me.’ There was a dreadful ghostly little cackle of laughter. Then the voice, with its macabre mirth, ‘I am you and you are me…’

Now there was a gust of wind stirring outside. It rustled leaves, crackling them like brittle paper, then swept down the chimney, sweeping the voice away.

Had
there been a voice? Even now, in the silence, Brigit could not have sworn to it. She lay drenched in chilly perspiration, helpless, unable to move or cry out.

Yet in the morning, with the fragile late autumn sunlight coming in the window, and the house full of normal sounds, the children scampering downstairs, Uncle Saunders shouting, and Nurse Ellen tripping in and out of the room, it seemed that it must have been a nightmare. How could a voice speak from the chimney? It was all so absurd. She must have thought she was awake and yet been dreaming. Anyway, the words the voice had spoken didn’t even make sense.
You are me…
Who was
me?
No, when Fergus came home this evening she could not tell him this latest flight of fancy. He would be as impatient with her as he was with Nicky.

Nurse Ellen’s routine was well under way now. First there was the early morning cup of tea, then the refreshing wash, the clean nightdress, the hair brushing, and the application of a decorous amount of make-up (‘just to keep up your morale, ducky’) then the brief rest before breakfast.