Laura Possessed (2 page)

‘Where's Peter now?' Laura felt as though she were memorizing a script, hoping that the right words would follow on the right cues, but Caroline seemed unaware of her stiffness.

‘He doesn't get back from school till almost six. We have a rota, three other mothers and I. It's my turn next week to do the car-run. Ah, here's tea. Mrs. Baines, this is my sister-in-law, Miss Hardy.'

Laura nodded at the pleasant-looking
women
who set the silver tray down carefully on the low table. The teapot and hot water jug glinted like molten copper in the firelight.

Caroline handed her a fragile cup and saucer and lifted the lid off the toast dish. ‘Take two—they're minute.'

Obediently Laura lifted the tiny, butter impregnated triangles of glistening toast.

‘And how's brother Richard? Still surrounded by a host of adoring women?'

‘Only one at a time,' Laura answered quietly. She always felt this need with both her married brothers and their disapproving wives to defend charming, unconventional Richard.

Caroline gave a short laugh. ‘I suppose that's something! What's the current one like?'

‘Perfectly sweet—you've probably seen her on TV—Gillian Marlowe. She was in the Herries series.'

‘The redhead? Yes, I know the one. And what about Toby and Janet? Any news of them?'

‘They came to see me in hospital, of course, but they couldn't stay long because of the baby. Haven't you seen them for a while?'

‘No, but no doubt I shall now, and Richard too. You'll draw them like bees to a honeypot.' Her voice, despite its lightness, had a slight edge to it. Laura was well aware that a lot of Caroline's resentment of her stemmed from the obvious devotion of her three elder brothers. ‘Never mind, one advantage—if it
can
be called that—of a house this size is that there's enough room to accommodate all one's relations when they suddenly decide that they can't possibly manage a week longer without spending a couple of days with you. Which is what will happen, mark my words!'

Laura said deprecatingly, ‘They really kept in touch with me because of Mother.' Her voice trembled and Caroline, instantly ashamed, bent forward and took her hand.

‘Try not to think about it if you can.'

‘But I saw her, Caroline,' Laura said unsteadily. ‘I saw her die. How can I forget that?'

‘Of course you can't forget it, but if you try to close your mind to it, it will gradually get easier. At the moment the most important thing is to get you completely well again.'

Edward, who had rather pointedly taken his cup of tea across to the window away from the heat of the fire, spoke for the first time.

‘I was suggesting Laura might try her hand at writing again. It would help to pass the time until she can get out and about.'

‘That's a wonderful idea! We've a good little mobile library which comes twice a week if you need reference books, or I could always get them for you in Ledbrook.'

Laura laughed protestingly. ‘Don't rush me. I haven't really thought about it yet, but in any case it wouldn't be historical this time, I think. In fact—' She paused, a slight frown creasing
her
brow.

‘What?'

‘It just occurred to me that if I did attempt something, I'd rather like to write about—about violence in the world today.' She stopped abruptly and gave an uncertain laugh. ‘Heaven knows why; it just suddenly came into my head!'

‘Sounds rather sinister!' Caroline said with a delicate shiver.

‘Yes, but fascinating. What's the reason for it all? Why, suddenly, do we have these outbursts of assassinations, hijackings, kidnappings—'

‘Because,' put in Edward drily, ‘we haven't had a war for thirty years and man is naturally an aggressive animal.'

‘Spoken like an Englishman, darling!' Caroline remarked. ‘What do you imagine has been going on in Korea, Vietnam, Palestine—even Ireland, over the last twenty years? No war, indeed!'

‘No major war, I meant. Only limited numbers were involved and the rest of us have to suppress our aggression as best we can. In some cases that causes trouble. Remember me speaking of Clive Sandilands, Laura? You should have a word with him. He's engaged in writing a book on America in the sixties to be called, I believe,
The Violent Decade.
He could well be of some help to you.'

‘I don't know that I'd dare to approach
anyone
as eminent as Clive Sandilands,' Laura murmured, ‘even if he is a friend of yours.'

‘As a matter of fact, you'll have the chance to meet him on Sunday. Tom Howard, the managing director of our newspaper group, is giving a cocktail party. We're all invited and I know for a fact that Clive will be there. He's only over here for a couple of weeks—virtually lives in the States now. If you're really interested in violence, he's the one to fill you in.'

‘I very much doubt whether I'll be up to a cocktail party,' Laura said dubiously. At last the heat from the fire was beginning to soothe away the deep chill that had enveloped her, and her eyelids felt heavy again.

Caroline reached forward and took her empty cup. ‘I thought you'd be tired and when I heard Edward call, I slipped into your room and switched on the electric blanket. It will be nice and warm for you now.'

‘That sounds very tempting.'

‘Edward, have you brought the cases in from the car? Perhaps you could get them while I take Laura up.'

Laura allowed herself to be helped to her feet, dismayed at her extreme lassitude. Her footsteps faltered as they reached the hall and she glanced almost fearfully towards the front door. It looked perfectly ordinary—a solid, handsome oak door with nothing about it to account for those few moments of paralyzing
terror.
Yet even as she reassured herself, she was aware of a movement just beyond her vision and turned quickly, expecting that someone else had come into the hall. There was no one there, but the remembered sense of creeping cold stole back towards her.

‘All right?' Caroline asked, feeling her involuntary jerk. Her breath was shallow and uneven and she had none to spare for a reply. She nodded and went on up the stairs, Caroline's arm supporting her.

The bedroom into which they went was bright and fresh with a pretty floral paper and pale blue carpet. A gas-fire boosted the heat from the radiator which ran under the window, and Laura exclaimed with pleasure. Pushing aside her uneasiness, she moved across to the window and leant for a moment on the sill looking out across the garden.

‘What strange, twisted trees!' she commented. ‘I bet the boys have a marvellous time climbing them!'

‘Trees?' Caroline paused in the act of turning down the counterpane. ‘What trees?'

‘Those, at the bottom of the garden.' Laura turned back to the window and stiffened unbelievingly. Beyond the lawn and flower beds was a neat patch of soil obviously destined later in the year to supply the vegetables for the house. ‘But—I'm sure I saw—'

‘You mean the pear and the plum, against
the
wall?'

‘No, I—they were down at the bottom—'

‘Possibly in the first quick glance your mind transposed them. I've often done that myself when I'm tired. Come on now, slip off your dress and get under the covers. Shall I help you?'

‘No, I can manage, thank you. And, Caroline—'

‘Yes?'

‘I do appreciate it, you and Edward having me here.'

‘It's the least we could do,' Caroline said briskly. ‘Lie down now and rest and I'll give you a call half an hour before dinner. Sleep well.' She left the room, closing the door behind her.

Laura stood in the middle of the floor and drew a deep, quivering breath. In spite of what Caroline had said about transposing the image of the fruit trees, she was not convinced. It was not fruit trees she had seen down there against the far wall of the garden but dark, oddly twisted trees huddled close together like a crowd of small, crippled old men. She shuddered and, unbuttoning her dress, stepped out of it and laid it over the chair, but instead of getting straight into bed, she crouched down on the rug by the gas-fire, welcoming its warm rays on her thin bare arms. The last hour had been quite traumatic. She tried to fight down the memory of the sensation she had
experienced
as she entered the house, and yet it was impossible to blot out completely because, to a lesser extent, it was here in the room with her now, an undeniable sense of desperate, hopeless waiting. Once again she thought she caught the flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, again she turned her head sharply, though this time she knew there could be no one there.

She was not aware how long she stayed crouched on the rug in her petticoat, but at last, unsteadily, she made her way over to the bed and gratefully inched between the warm sheets, drawing them up over her shoulders. She had forgotten to turn off the gas-fire and it popped and hissed gently against the far wall, but she was too warm and drowsy to get out of bed.

So here she was, at Four Winds. Once again the little tremor ran down her spine as it had each time she heard the name of this house, ever since Edward had bought it months ago. Everything is all right, she told herself confusedly. She was in a warm, comfortable room, surrounded by normal people doing everyday things. If she strained her ears, she could hear Mrs. Baines moving about in the kitchen below. Edward and Caroline would be in the pleasant sitting-room she had just left, and soon nine-year-old Peter would be home from school. How, in the midst of all this happy bustle, could she—and apparently only
she—be
aware of this strange undercurrent, this pervading sense of tragedy? And whether that tragedy lay in the past or the future, or whether it straddled them both, there was no way of knowing.

Then, from one instant to the next, she must have slept, for she was in another room that she had never seen before, and there was a man with her, a man who held and kissed her with increasing urgency while she clung to him with eyes open so as to miss no moment of his closeness. He moved his head away slightly to look down at her and every feature of his face imprinted itself on her mind in her frenzied desire to memorize each detail, as though she knew that inevitably they must soon part.

It was an attractive, though self-indulgent face with heavily lidded eyes of a slaty grey-blue, a broad nose and full, sensual mouth. His chin had a slight cleft in it and his dark hair, shaggy and over-long, fell forward over his broad forehead. Smilingly he endured her intense scrutiny. He lifted a hand and almost reverently touched her face.

‘I worship you, Noel,' he said softly. ‘Do you know that?'

Slowly, as her eyes strained towards him, his features began to blur and fade and she cried out with a sense of unbearable loss. She could hear her own voice clearly and then, still in the coils of the dream, Caroline's: ‘Laura! Are you all right?'

‘Laura'?
The name was frighteningly unfamiliar. Frantically she struggled awake, half of her trying to delve back into the dream, the other half desperately seeking to escape from it.

Caroline stood by the bed looking down at her. ‘I heard you call out. You must have been dreaming. In any case I was just coming—it's almost seven. We usually eat at seven-thirty, but there's time for a bath first if you'd like one. The bathroom's next door.'

She switched the light on as she went out. For a long moment Laura lay still. Then, as the trembling abated, she swung her legs to the floor and reached for her dressing-gown.

CHAPTER TWO

During the next few days, Laura despairingly tried to stamp down her growing awareness of that strange force which seemed to follow her about the house. Brought up in a rational household, she was convinced that this awareness, obviously peculiar to herself, must be brought about by some malfunction of her brain as a result of the car crash. Far, far better to endure those searing, iron-banded headaches than this delusion. Nor dare she confide her uneasiness to Edward or Caroline, in case they should feel she was not after all
well
enough to be out of hospital.

Unfortunately, Caroline's insistence on plenty of rest meant that she had to spend long hours alone in her bedroom, and after the pleasant normality of lunch, it was with a sense of dread that Laura had to steel herself to go upstairs, knowing that ‘she' would be waiting. Caroline had brushed aside her timid suggestion that she could rest equally well on the sitting-room sofa by declaring that if she were downstairs, she was sure to be disturbed by the general bustle of the household. Laura found herself wondering a little uncharitably whether part of the reason was that Caroline preferred to have her out of the way for most of the afternoon.

The dream she had had that first afternoon occupied Laura's mind continually that week. She recalled it with distaste and embarrassment, and her memory of the man's face, as clear in her mind as when she had dreamt it, awoke in her a feeling of acute dislike rather than the passion of her dream.

Over lunch one day, she questioned Caroline about the history of the house, wondering if anything in its past might explain her present discomfort.

‘Funnily enough,' Caroline told her, ‘it used to belong to the family of a man Edward knows. Apparently he spent his childhood here, before and during the war. I don't know what happened after that. He became a
journalist,
which is how Edward met him, and travelled freelance all over the world.'

‘And presumably while he was away his family moved?'

‘I suppose so. But he must feel his roots are here. He came back to this country a few months ago and is now thinking of buying a house in the district.'

‘Have you met him?'

‘Yes.' Some indefinable note in her voice made Laura glance at her, but she went on quickly, ‘I told him he must come to dinner one evening and see Four Winds as it is today.'