Ladies From Hell (19 page)

She said, “The top bedroom.” She turned, addressing me directly for the first time. She said, “It’s only small. But I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

I said, “I’m sure I shall,” and she laid a hand on my arm. She said gravely, “I’m glad you could come. Alec talks a lot about you. It meant a lot to him.”

As we walked down across the lawn, Boulter turned to me. He said, “As I told you. She’s all right.”

The sun had gone from the little bridge, the deep race was in shadow. Its breath still came up to me, old and chill and sweet. Boulter paused by the handrail. He said, “It was an undershot wheel of course. You can see where the shaft bearings used to be. The stones were in the first building, on the end there. There’s still an old cracked one round the back. We were going to lug it up the hill. Couldn’t quite think what to do with it when we got it there though.”

I said, “What are the tall plants on the other side? With the lilac flowers?”

He said, “Giant balsam. They’re a plague round here. Got an explosive seed dispersal system, I’ll show you later on. Gives you a right turn the first time.”

I said, “Alec,” and he turned, again with a glint of amusement. He said, “What?”

I said, “Nothing. It’ll keep. Let’s get the car up.”

Boulter’s system for low-slung vehicles proved complex but workable. We pointed the bonnet at the
first post of the handrail, looked sharp right, realigned and locked again. A couple of admonitory thumps and the Midget was across. Boulter directed me round to the side of the house. There were a pair of garages, both with their doors standing open. Outside the nearer stood a smart olive-green Range Rover. I parked, hefted my gear, walked back with Alec to the house. He said, “I’ll show you your room. Then I thought you might like to walk down to The Grapes. Landlord’s a pal of mine. And the regulars are a decent crowd.”

I said, “Fine by me. What about Sarah?”

He said, “She won’t come. She’s getting dinner on. I’ve got some wine to pick up anyway.” He opened a door. He said, “Here you are. Loo’s at the end there, straight ahead. Bathroom next door. Take your time.”

The bedroom to which he had shown me was small, as the girl had said, tucked up under the eaves of the old cottage. A little bowl of roses stood on the dressing table; and the door of the tall, old-fashioned wardrobe had been left ajar. I unpacked, desultorily. I hadn’t brought a sight down with me. The bed was made up, the top sheet turned down crisp and flat. There is such a thing, definitely, as a woman’s touch.

I sat down and rubbed my face. I experienced a most extraordinary moment of pure melancholy; again, the sort of thing I thought I’d left years behind. I’d never managed to find my Ideal Woman, not that I blamed the opposition overmuch; and I’d made a pact with myself nobody else knew about, that I wouldn’t waste any more time looking. My life wasn’t bad, as lives go; but there was something about Coombe Hasset, something in the very air, that reminded me of its brevity. All sensations seemed subtly heightened; this was the flip side of the coin.

I washed, shaved, changed my shirt and shoved a fiver in the back pocket of my slacks. I walked back downstairs.
Sarah was scurrying about the kitchen, laying out this and that. She grinned at me, and Boulter opened the side door. He said, “Eight o’clock, love,” and she said without malice, “Ha ha.”

The Grapes proved to be a biggish, comfortable pub on the outskirts of the village. The lounge windows commanded a view of the high down; and, inevitably, the great funnel of the turbine, glinting golden now in the evening light. The landlord, a neat, dark, alert man who looked, and subsequently turned out to be, ex RAF, greeted Boulter cheerfully. We talked the usual pleasant stuff, over mugs of first-rate bitter; the state of the local crops, the chances of the village cricket squad in a forthcoming needle match, the merits and otherwise of barrel pressure in the conditioning of beer. Later I was introduced to a craggy, hornrimmed character who Boulter explained was one of the engineers from the Coombe project. He seemed well pleased with the state of his world, and announced that ‘Five had been hooked in’ that afternoon. I asked a question; and he shook his head. He said, “They number outwards both ways from Big Nellie up there, she’s the centre of the chain. Five’s just this side of Warrenfield, about three miles down the road. Two and Four are up north. Which way did you come in, Shaftesbury?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “You could’ve seen Four from the road then. Two’s behind some trees, in a bit of a dip.”

I said, “I didn’t see anything till this one hit me between the eyes.”

He grinned, staring up. He said, “Big bastard, isn’t she? There’s bigger in the pipeline though.”

I said, “If Hebden doesn’t get his way.”

He said, “Christ, don’t talk about that sod. We’ve got troubles enough of our own. You should hear what they call him on site.” He drained his glass, set it down with a thump. He said, “Tip up, Alec, it’s your ruddy round.”

Boulter said, “You sorted that drive shaft problem, Mike?”

He nodded. He said, “Changed the whole unit. Another few thousand of the taxpayers’ money.” He turned to me. He said, “This you won’t believe. But to burrow out for the jennies
and control gear, get it all down out of sight, costs six times more than the ducting up on top.”

I said, “Because of the environment people?”

He narrowed his eyes. He said, “Ostensibly, yes.”

I waited; and he shrugged. He said, “Out of sight, out of mind. The deeper they are, the safer. No little picking fingers. But the cooling problems were hell.”

It seemed pointless to pursue the question; he’d said all he intended to already. Instead I said, “One thing I never really understood though. If this system gets going, ducts on all the high ground from here to Argyll, what about voltage drop through the lines? It was always the big objection.”

He grinned again. He said, “Alec could have told you that. Know anything about superconductors?”

I said, “Only that they work.”

He said, “You know as much as anybody then. But look. If we drop the conductors to two degrees Kelvin, that’s about two hundred and seventy below, close enough to absolute zero to make no odds, we can send thirty kilovolts to John o’ Groats if we want. And get thirty kv back. End of problem.”

I said, “That’s fine as far as it goes. But where does the power come from for the refrigeration?”

He pointed solemnly at the ceiling. He said, “Off the big fans.”

I said, “You reckon you can generate that much? And still have a useable margin?”

He nodded. He said, “Such are the articles of our faith.”

He excused himself a few minutes later, and left. After he had gone Boulter said, “It is a faith you know. With all of them.”

I said, “He certainly sounded serious enough.”

Boulter said, “He’s a conservationist. A lot of them are.”

I said, “He hardly looked the type.”

Boulter said with unaccustomed gravity, “The
type
is the human type, Glyn. It’s getting that serious.”

We weren’t, as it turned out, all that late back. The church clock struck eight fifteen as Boulter pushed open the kitchen door. The table had been set; and the meal,
a delicious-smelling
coq au vin
, was ready. Boulter busied himself with the chilled wine we had brought back, while Sarah served. He said, “In the best spirit of the investigators of old, the intrepid band ate a hearty supper.”

The meal tasted as good as it had smelled. We were all too busy to talk much for a time. It was succeeded by an extensive cheeseboard, presided over by what Boulter described as the last piece of Dorset Blue in the universe. Later I said, “Apart from being a superb chef, Sarah, what do you do for a living?”

She smiled. She said slowly, “Nothing much. I’m a secretary.”

Boulter poured the last of the wine. He said, “She’s also the meanest hand in the business with a Tarot pack. That’s why she’s here.”

I laughed, and received one of Alec’s direct, expressionless stares. I knew that look as well; I’d come unstuck too often in the past by not taking him literally. I waited, wondering if the wine might have loosened his tongue; but the hope was forlorn. Nothing loosens Boulter’s tongue, until he’s good and ready.

We carried coffee and brandies through to the lounge, sat awhile in silence just watching out. I don’t know how to adequately describe the atmosphere of that great room as dusk deepened. Lights were showing now, here and there among the huddled houses of the village; above them the church tower loomed massive against a turquoise afterglow. The roar of the little race came up clear, wafting with the cool air from the valley; and by the house grew more drifts of the great balsam plant. As the blue deepened so the massed flower heads seemed almost to glow, with a chalky luminescence. A car revved, sounding a long way off; and I was aware of something that, insistently as I put it from me, as insistently returned. A presence, almost a power, that flowed on and on down the dark valley, out into the night; endless, inscrutable, immeasurably
old
.

It was Boulter who broke the spell. A few minutes before ten the girl stirred suddenly, reached to pick up a cardigan; and Alec leaned to press a control switch on the wall. A soft hissing and the great glass screen rose, shutting off the night.
He moved round the room, clicking on alcove lights here and there. He said, “I think we’d best have a look at the ten o’clock.”

I thought the newscaster looked abnormally grim. The lead story he had was grimmer. There had been another demonstration, this time in Parliament Square. We saw Hebden first, the so-called Spokesman for the People; the angry, intolerant face, skin drawn taut across the cheekbones, eyes that flashed and snapped behind the heavy-framed glasses; we heard the thick, grating voice as he harangued the crowd. The cameras moved then to the demonstration itself. We saw the fighting break out, fists swinging and bottles, a man stamped bloody underfoot. The lines of mounted police moved forward; but this time the activists had been ready for the horses. I see no point in describing in detail what they did; it harrowed me at the time, and it harrows me still. What I do remember is that at one point I glanced across, appalled, at the girl. She sat motionless, her eyes on the screen; and the expression on her face was one I shall never forget. It was a look not of anger or disgust, but of sadness; a sadness so profound—and here I must once more put down my impression to the strange power of the place in which we sat—that she seemed in that moment a Madonna, knowing and taking to herself the sum of human suffering; the suffering that has always been and that will be, to the end of time.

The newscast ended; and Boulter switched the set off, turned its face once more slowly to the wall. And undoubtedly I was hypersensitized, for in that gesture too I seemed to see an infinity of significance; it was as if the machine itself might be shamed by the obscenities it had had to show.

Sarah didn’t speak, after the programme ended; she walked out to the kitchen, quiet as ever, began to tinkle with cups. She returned with more coffee, white this time and sweet, and I blessed her for the thought. We drank, silently; and she collected the cups, stacked them to one side. She kissed us both, carefully, on the lips, and said, “Good night.”

I think the womanly, grossly unexpected touch roused me from the queer mood of despondency into which I had fallen. The disquiet ebbed fractionally, to be succeeded
by the new and equally illogical thought that what we had seen was somehow urgently connected with the place in which we sat, and with Boulter’s reasons for persuading me there. I turned to him; and he spread his hands. He said, “It’s all right, Glyn. I know.”

He crossed the room, came back with a little occasional table. On it he set glasses and the brandy. He said, “I always think better with something in my hand.” He reached across, and poured.

I said, “Alec, what is this place? What’s going on? Why did you ask me down?”

He lit one of his rare cigarettes. He said, “Answering in order, you know what the place is already. It’s a small Dorset chalk village, the site of a radically new experiment in power generation. As to what’s going on; to answer honestly, I don’t know. Not yet. Why did I ask you down? Because something, I’m not clear what, is about to happen. And I wanted you in on it. There are forces working here that I frankly don’t understand. I feel them, you feel them; Sarah feels them. I want to know more about them.”

Something suddenly crossed my mind. I said, “Boulter, if it’s anything to do with poltergeists—”

He laughed, for the first time that evening. He said, “Not this time Glyn, you’ve got my word. This is a straightforward investigation; ghosts needn’t apply.”

I said, “Alec, what about Sarah? Why is she here?”

He laughed again. He said, “She still worries you, doesn’t she?” He swirled his brandy thoughtfully, palm cupped round the glass, and sipped. He said, “As I explained, she’s rather good with a Tarot pack. In fact, she has a better than normal psi ability. The Psychology Department ran some tests a couple of sessions back; you know, the standard card thing. Stars and wavy lines. She came out very well. Nothing to blow the mind, but high enough to be interesting. I thought that might be useful.”

I said slowly, “She’s … different.” I realized the banality of the remark of course as soon as the words were spoken; but for the life of me I couldn’t find a better phrase for
what was in my mind.

Boulter smiled. He said, “She takes life as it comes, Glyn. That’s the rarest thing about her.”

He got up again, took a book from one of the shelves, sat with it in his hands. He said, “As regards what
may
be going on, this is as good a start as any. It was written in the twenties by a man called Alfred Watkins. It’s about leys.”

It rang a bell. I remembered there had been sporadic interest in leys and ley-hunting for years; there was even a magazine for ley buffs. The theory was that, for reasons nobody could explain, sites of ancient importance—earthworks, churches, standing stones, sometimes even very old trees—tended to align. I’d heard some extraordinary claims made, and seen some impressively-marked Ordnance Survey sheets; but I’d never been able to see the real point, and certainly nothing conclusive had ever been proved. I said, “I know the theories, more or less. So what?”