Roots of Evil (8 page)

He went out into the lobby, propping the outer door carefully open, and around to the side of the building. Ah, here was the first of the windows. It was quite high up, but Edmund was fairly tall, and by dint of levering the steel under it, he managed to lever a whole section free. The plywood was brittle with damp and age, and it came away without too much difficulty. It would be easy enough for someone to clamber through and drop down on to the floor on the other side. Edmund was not going to attempt this, of course; he was not going to risk leaving fibres from his clothes or shoes on the
window frame because they might later be found by the police, and identified as his.

He went back in, and levered an equivalent section of plywood from the window, then stood back to consider. Yes, it looked all right; it looked as if someone had got in, and had afterwards tried to replace the boarding to hide the traces.

One last look around the dim studio to make sure nothing was missed or forgotten. Yes, he thought everything was all right. He barely glanced at the thing in the elaborate old chair, its face half in shadow. And then he switched off the light and went out into the night, remembering to slam the main door to engage the lock.

It was a long drive home and it was still raining quite heavily, but Edmund did not mind either of these things. There was not much traffic about, and most of the roads were straightforward dual-carriageways with only an occasional traffic island. He remembered the road quite well, and he did not falter or take any wrong turnings. And with every mile he covered, Ashwood became more and more distant.

He reached his own house midway through the evening, took a hot bath, and put the things he had worn into the washing machine. The thick rain-jacket he had worn and the gloves could be burned; he put them in the potting-shed for a bonfire tomorrow, and then made himself a supper of scrambled eggs with grated cheese. Before going to bed he drank a large whisky and soda, and swallowed a couple of aspirin. He had suffered from quite bad nightmares in his youth, especially after the
death of his father. He hoped he would not have a nightmare tonight.

Falling asleep, it was necessary to force his mind away from that last glimpse he had had of Trixie Smith, her eyes destroyed, and the blood drying to a dark crust on her face.

It had been absolutely vital not to think about those dreadful bloodied eye-sockets during the journey to the place called Mowbray Fen. The ambulance would have reached Pedlar’s Yard long ago, and if there was anything to be done for the fearsome blinded thing that had groped stumblingly along the darkened hall, then it would have been done by now. There would be a very bad memory of those last moments in the house – of crouching in the dark under-stairs cupboard, not daring to breathe in case the blood-smeared head appeared around the door – and it would be a memory that would last for a very long time, perhaps for years and years. But it could not be allowed to get in the way of leaving London and reaching Mowbray Fen.

And although it was quite scary to be going off into the unknown like this, completely alone, it was not as scary as sleeping in the house in Pedlar’s Yard, trying
not to hear the stumbling footsteps on the stairs. So I’ll cope with the scary feeling and I’ll just think about finding that house.

It was not so many years since a child travelling alone would have attracted concerned attention – ‘Shouldn’t you be with your mother, my dear…?’ ‘Where are you going on your own…?’ But it had been the start of the so-called liberated 1970s: children went more or less where they liked and did more or less what they wanted, and respecting your elders was uncool, boring, a thing of the past. What’s it to you where I’m going, mister?

Mother had always said it was ill-mannered to talk in that way, but at least it meant nobody took much notice of a child travelling alone. And it turned out to be easy to slip into the big anonymous railway station and hide in the lavatories until it was morning and there were enough people milling around not to look twice at a child. It was easy, as well, to carefully study the glass-fronted maps in the railway station, and then buy a train ticket to Peterborough which seemed to be the nearest big town to Mowbray Fen, although it was suddenly heart-bumpingly anxious to sit waiting for the train to come in. What if police come storming in before the train arrives, looking for me? What would I do?

But the train came in, and once on it, once it started away from the station, it was possible to feel safer. I’m going away from Pedlar’s Yard, and the farther I go, the safer I am. I am nothing to do with Pedlar’s Yard any longer and I am nothing to do with North London any longer. I am a person travelling to Lincolnshire, going to visit my grandmother. The words brought a deep
satisfaction. Just as the names of the villages and towns learned from mother had been a litany to blot out the brutality, so now was the phrase ‘going to visit my grandmother’ a charm that could be recited to inquisitive grown-ups. I am going to visit my grandmother who lives in Mowbray Fen. The wheels of the train sang the names of the stories. Thorney and Witchford and Whissendine. Rockingham Forest and going-to-see-grandmother.

Peterborough was finally reached after lunch, and from there on, buses had to be taken, but this also turned out to be easy. People at bus stations could be politely asked for directions, although once a stout, bossy-looking woman said sharply, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ and there was a breath-snatching moment of panic. But it was easy to point to a well-dressed female on the other side of the square and say there was Mother, and that there had been a dentist’s appointment that afternoon.

Seeing the sign that said ‘You are entering the County of Lincolnshire’ brought a lurch of delighted expectation. Lincoln. Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest. And Pedlar’s Yard was a long way behind now, and clearly the money was going to last, which was one huge worry out of the way. It was even possible to be interested in things like newspaper headlines on placards. The Space Race – America and Russia sending up Apollos and Pioneers and probe-ships to Mars. And there were stories about the fairly shocking musical,
Jesus Christ, Superstar
, and about the really shocking films like
Last Tango in Paris
, and
Deep Throat.
People had sniggered about
Deep Throat
at school, but films and musicals had not played
any part in the life of Pedlar’s Yard. Because there had been no money for them, or because there had been no understanding of how marvellous things like that could be? Yes, but one day I’m going to be grown up and then I’m going to know about films and music and books.

And then at last there was a bus that left Grantham, which rumbled along through all the places with the fairytale names. Thorney and Witchford and Whissendine. Parson Drove and Kings Cliffe and Collyweston…There was the feeling of being pulled deeper and deeper into Mother’s stories.

And now Mowbray Fen, just the tiniest of tiny villages on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, was only a few miles away, which meant the house in the marshes was only a few miles away as well. And when I get there I’ll really have escaped, and I’ll have stepped into a different world.

Shall I change my name for that different world? Tear up the birth certificate and be called something entirely new? Would it be safer to do that, so that nobody could ever know about Pedlar’s Yard? What could I be called?

The appalling possibility that Mother’s whispered stories might not be true could not be considered, not even for a moment. The marsh house must exist and that was all there was to it. It had been dreamed about and yearned for so strongly and for so long, that it could not be simply a fairytale.

But once off the bouncing country bus came the search for signposts that pointed to Mowbray Fen, and a different panic swept in, because supposing there
weren’t any signposts? Supposing this whole thing was going to turn out to be as elusive as looking for the rainbow’s end so that you could claim the pot of gold? Supposing that letter Mother showed me was an old one and the house isn’t here any longer? Or supposing I got the journey wrong, and I’ve ended up miles away from where I should be?

But the panic did not last long, because this was the land of the jack o’ lanterns and the will o’ the wisps, and there was a strong pure light everywhere – a light that bore no resemblance to London’s thick cloggy skies – and if ever will o’ the wisps danced in England they would surely dance here, to their own strange wild music, moving across the flat rolling marshlands, in and out of the thick fringings of reeds and rushes. Keep looking. The road will be here somewhere.

The road was there, of course. As if the creatures of the myths were pointing the way, there was the sign-post: ‘Mowbray Fen, 4 miles.’

Mowbray Fen. Heart’s desire and journey’s end. I’m nearly there.

Mowbray Fen, when it was finally reached, turned out to be a village with a little straggling street and a big square area of grass at one end, with a stone cross. There were shops – some of them with little roundy windows – and there were houses built out of stone, which was something you hardly ever saw in Pedlar’s Yard.

But Pedlar’s Yard need never appear again, and it need not be talked about or even remembered. Out here, it was possible to believe this.

Just beyond the main street was a church with a little spire; music came from its half-open door – lovely music, not like anything you had ever heard before, but music that was somehow part of the strangeness of this place and that was all mixed up with the feeling of having escaped.

And there, beyond the church, and behind the green, was a small sign, so weathered it was almost impossible to read. But to the prepared mind it was very clear indeed. ‘The Priest’s House’ it said, and at the sight of it memory stirred all over again.

‘It’s called the Priest’s House,’
Mother had said.
‘It was built when people could be put to death for believing in the wrong religion, and there are legends that priests hid there before being smuggled out of the country and across to Holland.’

The house lay at the end of a bumpy, gravelly track. It was not really part of the village at all: it was a mile or two outside the village, and it was much bigger than Mother had described it. Mother had made it sound an enchanted place: a tiny pretty cottage, the walls covered with roses or ivy, and sunlight glinting permanently on the windows. But it was not like that at all; it was built of the same grey stone as the village shops, and it had twisty chimneys and gardens all round it. There was a white gate that swung inwards, and a crunchy path led up to the door. A little lamp hung over the door – it gave out a lovely amber glow that made you feel warm and hopeful – and there was a light on in one of the downstairs windows. And surely, oh surely, the lady who lived here – the lady who had had the handsome young man in love with her all those years ago – would still be
here. Because this was the beckoning dream at last: it was the place that had shone like a beacon all your life. I
can’t
have come all this way to find she’s moved away, or died.

It was the hardest thing yet to reach up to the heavy door knocker, but it had to be done. The knocker rapped smartly down, and the whole world narrowed to this single moment: to the violet dusk and the scents of the garden, and the silence which was not like any silence anywhere else. Light years spun past and whole worlds were born and died, and it began to seem as if Time had become stuck and nothing was going to happen ever again.

And then the door opened and she was there, framed in the doorway, an inquiring look on her face, not particularly worried by an unexpected caller, merely wanting to know what this was about. There was the sound of a radio or a television from one of the rooms, and there was a faint drift of something savoury cooking, all mixed up with the scent of polish and cleanliness.

‘Yes?’

She was not quite as Mother’s stories had suggested. For one thing she did not seem as old, although there were lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, and her hair was grey. But when she smiled she had the most beautiful smile in the world, and it did not matter if she was seventy or only sixty, or if she was ninety or even a hundred. She had the loveliest voice in the world, as well. In Pedlar’s Yard people did not bother overmuch about voices; they just said what they had to say, and did not care how it sounded. But from now on,
I’ll
always
know that voices are important. Not posh accents or anything like that – for a moment Pedlar’s Yard surfaced stubbornly, because it was wimpish and stupid to pretend to be posh! – but I’ll remember that a voice can be beautiful. Like a midnight sky. Like velvet.

Take a deep breath and then say what you’ve planned. Say it properly and politely. Here I go, then. ‘I’m looking for my grandmother. But I don’t know if this is the right house.’

The lady with the voice like a midnight sky and the most beautiful smile in the world, said, ‘It could be the right house. What is your grandmother’s name?’

‘Alice Wilson.’

She did not speak for a moment, and then she said, ‘Where have you come from?’

‘London. A place called Pedlar’s Yard.’

‘Oh!’ she said, and there was a moment when something seemed to switch on behind her eyes, and there was the feeling of an emotion suddenly springing out of nowhere, and whatever the emotion was, it was so extremely strong that it would not have been surprising to see it leap out and take solid shape in the dusk-lit garden.

Then she said, ‘Then this is the right house. I’m Alice Wilson. I know about Pedlar’s Yard. But I didn’t know I had a grandchild, although I’m very glad to meet you. I think you’d better come inside.’

Come inside…The words uttered by all the enchantresses in all the stories…Come inside, my dear…And sometimes ‘inside’ was evil and dangerous, and sometimes it was wonderful and magical. And until you
actually stepped inside, there was absolutely no way of knowing which it was going to be.

But to do anything other than step into the house was absolutely unthinkable.

Those first days in the Priest’s House were filled with bewildering new impressions – so much so that even the aching loss of Mother – the pain that had nagged and gnawed just under the surface all the way here – became nearly bearable.

For some inexplicable reason it had been unthinkable not to tell the whole story of Pedlar’s Yard with complete truthfulness. Alice (‘You had better call me that – I don’t think I can cope with being “grandmother”,’ she had said) had listened without interrupting that first evening, but at one stage her lips had trembled and she had clutched her hands together so tightly that the knuckles showed white. And – this was the curious thing – the part that had upset her so much had not been where Mother had died; it had been the part where Mother had used the scissors on the man who had brutalized and cowed her for so many years.

But then she had said, ‘That was a very dreadful thing for you to see, but the memories will get better after a while. And you’ll travel away from the sadness in time. You’ll build a bridge away from it and you’ll go across that bridge into whatever’s waiting for you in the future.’

‘I will?’

‘Yes. It’s how life works. We aren’t allowed to be sad all the time.’

‘I ’spect you’ll have to tell the police about what happened, won’t you?’

‘Don’t look so frightened, you solemn little owl. We’re not going to tell the police anything.’

‘We’re not?’

‘No. That house – Pedlar’s Yard – is a very long way away from here. And you brought that last letter I sent, didn’t you? Well, I know you did.’

‘I thought you might need to see it so’s you’d know I really was me.’

She smiled. ‘I can see you’re really you without any letters,’ she said. ‘Even without the photo you brought, I can see it.’ A pause. ‘I’m glad you brought that.’

‘I wanted to remember Mother as happy. She’s happy in the photo, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ Alice had looked at the small photo for a very long time, occasionally reaching out a finger to trace the features. Once she said, ‘You’re more like your mother than your father.’

‘I know.’

‘Were there any other papers in the house? Anything that might link Pedlar’s Yard to this place? Other photographs, perhaps? Old ones?’