The Diary Of Pamela D. (10 page)

years ago. They were living together for
almost a year before he killed her-’

THEO-- ‘Good
God
, that was
him
? How many others has
he-’

?-- ‘We’re not sure. There’s the six that we
know of, but we suspect there are more. As

to the other matter: are you sure keeping her
here is wise? He may try again-’

THEO-- ‘I’m sure. He’s slipped through CID’s
fingers once too often for my comfort. Not that

I’m blaming CID, mind you. It’s just that . .
. ’

?-- (kindly) ‘There’s no need to explain.
Well, with any luck the moor will take care of

Mr. Albert Askrigg, and that
will be the end of it. Pity, though. I’d rather we
had
him. I’d think nothing
of roasting him alive over hot coals just to find out what
he
knows
, so that
the families of those poor girls he killed can get some sense of
closure.’

Pamela woke to a sunny day, and Mrs.
Dewhurst, who was sitting in a chair by the window. Hearing the
girl stir, she left her chair, came and sat on the edge of the bed,
felt the girl’s forehead with her wrist, then took her hands. Her
manner was grave, concern erasing all the habitual humour from her
mien.

‘That’s quite a shiner you’ve got. Does your
lip still hurt? Doctor Morris put a stitch in it last night. Do you
remember?’

Pamela shook her head, reluctant to speak for
fear of tearing her lip, but grateful for Mrs. Dewhurst’s
presence.

Looking at once more serious than Pamela
could ever remember seeing her, Mrs. Dewhurst said gently, ‘Do you
remember anything beyond getting away from that animal?’

At once there was a small flood of memory, of
new uniforms and broken eggs, of herself laying on the bed being
tended by Ellie, but no more. She shook her head.

‘Well,’ Mrs. Dewhurst said quietly, ‘it’s
just as well, I guess.’ At last she smiled, though it did nothing
to conceal her sadness. ‘Your timing’s not as good as it used to
be. Look, your breakfast is still sitting here, and . . . what do
you know! It’s still warm. D’you think you could manage a bite?
It’s poached eggs on toast- the perfect food for an invalid.’

Pamela smiled, and winced at the pain in her
lip. And then-

Her own eyes wet, Mrs. Dewhurst said, ‘Oh, my
dear . . . isn’t there anything that doesn’t make you cry?’ She
caressed the girl’s face fondly, and for a long moment the two
shared a look as intimate as that of mother and daughter, saying
nothing: no words were needed. ‘All right, now,’ Mrs. Dewhurst said
at last, ‘sit up and eat your breakfast before it gets any
colder.’

As soon as Pamela had eaten as much as her
stomach would allow, Mrs. Dewhurst said firmly, ‘Here, you lay back
down on your tummy and let me rub your back for a bit. You look
like you’re ready to drop off again.’

As Pamela drifted downwards into slumber once
more, her guts began churning with anxiety, her thoughts tormented
by half-remembered memories or impressions of violence and pain,
and incongruously- water. But Mrs. Dewhurst’s quiet voice and
gentle touch smoothed out her pain until at last it became
transformed from red agony and the terror of nightmares to the
warm, calming, irrhythmic sparkles of tropical sunlight on a
languid sea.

As she slept, a new dream came unbidden: she
was walking on a beach, wearing a pale yellow summer dress, feeling
the warm wind blowing, driving white breakers upon the beach. She
was laughing, holding the hand of a little girl who was tugging at
her to move faster, to catch up with . . .

Ahead of them, dressed in khaki-coloured
shorts and faded blue T-shirt was Theo. He was deeply tanned and
smiling, half-turned towards them with his hand open, waiting for
Pamela and the little girl to catch up.

The child broke away from her, caught up with
Theo and took his hand. The two then stood, watching her, waiting
expectantly. But for some reason she couldn’t move, as though she
were rooted to the spot.

Theo and the little girl began moving away,
slowly, giving her plenty of time to catch up. But still she
couldn’t move, and every instant they were farther and farther
away. She tried her voice, but nothing would come. If she didn’t
move soon, they would be out of sight altogether. Though they moved
slowly, somehow, inexplicably, they were already nearing the
horizon. She knew that if they passed beyond that point, both of
them would be lost to her forever.

In desperation, she tried to force her
unwilling feet to move, but it was as though she were mired in
quicksand. Theo and the little girl were now little more than two
indistinct specks shimmering in the heat haze, a mirage that was
beginning to flicker and break up.

‘
No
. . . Theo . . . please, wait for
me . . . don’t go.
Theo
!’

Somehow, impossibly, he was right there
beside her. He had taken her hand. She looked around but couldn’t
see him anywhere.

‘I can’t . . . where are you?’

She felt his other hand on her brow, large,
warm, calming. ‘Shush now. I’m right here. I’m not going
anywhere.’

Strange . . . he
was
here, right beside
her, where he had been all along. But the little girl was off in
the distance yet-

‘I’ll come one day,’ the
little girl said. ‘But not yet. You
will
wait for me?’

Pamela stood watching her and wondered if the
waiting would never end.

-5-

‘
Come along, Pamela, you can ill-afford
to be late. The concert can’t begin without its star
soloist.’

Pamela smiled at Mrs. Pascoe’s exaggeration
as she tied back her hair, which though still a mass of dark curls
was much easier to manage since she’d let it grow out. After her
recovery she’d had to make up for lost time as Easter and the
concert approached. The choir-director, Mr. Howard, had intensified
her vocal training as soon as she was well enough, on the pretense
that Pamela and her voice were somehow an indispensable part of
this year’s performance. Pamela, however, wasn’t fooled for a
moment. There were four other sopranos with much more training,
experience and natural ability than she could ever hope to have.
She well knew the true reason to be that everyone seemed bent on
finding some small way to make her forget her experience at the
hands of Albert Askrigg. Yet despite their efforts not a moment
went by that she wasn’t aware that Albert Askrigg still roamed
free, a monster in man’s form prowling the moors of Yorkshire,
dangerous, pitiless, lethal, utterly without remorse. With a little
shiver she remembered that he had vowed to return one day to
Dewhurst mansion and finish what he’d begun. No, it was not yet
over: the demon still lived. But then, demons were supernatural
beings, and therefore were unkillable: and so Albert Askrigg was
free to try again, and possibly succeed where before he had
failed.

She took a deep breath . . . let it out
slowly . . . did her best to push such thoughts aside as being so
much melodramatic nonsense, and hurried to join Mrs. Pascoe. When
she got downstairs, her unpleasant musings were dispelled
altogether when Pamela saw that she was indeed holding things up,
that their little motorcade was lined up in the drive and ready to
go.

The concert went off very well, so well in
fact that she was able to sing her solo, ‘Let the Bright Seraphim,’
with something approaching confidence, though in truth she had been
scared witless at having to stand up in front of everyone. But
standing with her was an older gentleman, a semi-retired musician
who had played all his life in the London Symphony named Benjamin
Whitely who played the trumpet with sublime virtuosity, while Mrs.
Dalziel, an unflappable, matronly woman accompanied them on the
ancient and illustrious pipe-organ.

When the concert was over with and the crowd
dispersing, Mr. Howard took Pamela by the arm and led her to a
tall, distinguished-looking gentleman who was standing talking with
a number of men Pamela had never met before. She noted at once that
their suits were different in some manner- it was the shoulders;
they had raglan sleeves and looked very expensive, and somehow
foreign.

‘My dear, I want you to meet
an admirer of yours. This is Mr. Carl Ruher and these people are
his associates. Mr. Ruher is the former musical director of the
Berlin Philharmonic, and now works for the prestigious recording
company
Deutsche
Gramophone
.’

‘Please, call me Carl, Miss Dee,’ he said in
near-flawless English. ‘I was just asking my old friend Herr Howard
here if you were currently under contract to do any recording. He
has said “No,” so I am asking, before someone else discovers
you.’

Pamela could only stare, feeling blank.
‘Recording? Recording what? I’m not sure what you’re telling
me.’

To her bafflement, the men before her
smiled.

‘Pamela Dee,’ Mr. Howard
told her, ‘you are sometimes too unworldly and innocent to be
believed! Have you never heard of
Carmina
Burana
, by Carl Orff? I thought not. Well,
my dear, you had better locate a recording and listen to it soon,
because in two months’ time, you will be singing in it.’

Pamela wanted to protest that they were
making a serious mistake while wondering vaguely if they were
having it on at her expense, but these men were very no-nonsense,
professional types and made her feel as though any protest or
objection she might make would make her appear childish and
frivolous. Feeling trapped, Pamela sensed a presence at her elbow,
turned around and caught her breath. It was Theo.

‘When will you be wanting her for
rehearsals?’

‘A week before the recording
date will suffice,’ Carl Ruher said with a smile. ‘I’ll be in touch
with you through Mr. Howard to arrange flights and accommodation.
Good day to you. Come,
Howie
, where’s this village of Haworth
with its famous
Black
Bull
? I believe you owe my colleagues and I
a pint or two.’

‘Flights?’ Pamela asked Theo as the others
wandered off, ‘Where is this recording supposed to be done?’

‘Why, Berlin, of course,’ Theo replied as
though stating something obvious.

‘
What
? But what about . . . Theo . . .
Mr. Dewhurst, I have work to do! The paperwork for that contract in
Bradford comes up in the beginning of May.’ She didn’t mean to
sound desperate, but the prospect of having to do something she
knew absolutely nothing about made her experience the same sort of
panic as though someone had casually asked her to walk a high-wire
strung between two tall buildings.

‘Not to worry,’ he said with maddening calm.
‘That’s what laptop computers are for. You’ll have plenty of time
left over to get your work for me out of the way.’

‘But I need you to help me
get set up,’ she said, which wasn’t true. What
was
true was that she didn’t want to
leave her comfortable new home and be so far away from
him
.

‘Relax,’ he said with an unreadable smile.
‘I’ll be coming with you.’

The recording got done, but it was very
nearly a complete disaster. Pamela found that she was simply not
equipped to handle the pressure and demands of performing with a
full choir and orchestra. The sectional singing was not a problem
but a bad case of nerves early on very nearly finished her big
solo. The director, a kind, patient, worldly old gentleman, who had
seen and dealt with all manner of temperaments and mishaps, was
able to coax her through it, but in the end she knew with certainty
that her short career as a professional soloist was finished.

During the return flight she
felt absolutely mortified, having let Theo down after all the
trouble he had gone to. She spent the time pretending to look out
the window. In truth she averted her gaze because she didn’t dare
face him. And how was she going to be able to face everyone at
home? She had let them down too. At the moment, all she wanted was
to cry and die at the same time, which she knew sounded silly, but
it
was
exactly how
she felt.

She rode the rest of the way home with Theo
in miserable silence.

That evening, sharing a late
supper in the staff dining-room with Mrs. Pascoe, who had waited up
for her, Pamela was thoughtful for a long time, her thoughts mainly
concerned with Theo. He had shown no disappointment over her poor
performance but he had offered her no encouragement either. That
was so like his treatment of her, if you could call it that. He was
always
there
,
solid, strong, reliable, daunting and unshakable, but it seemed
also that he was
never
there, at least for
her
. It often made her wonder, as it
did now, why he bothered to be there at all. And he was always
watching her, somewhat speculatively, with a half-amused quirk to
his lips. When he did that, she found herself writhing, yet part of
her wanted to fling herself at him in the vain hope that he would
take her in his arms. That he would hold her, that he would do
something to remove the niggling worm of doubt and angst that ate
at her, that he would kiss her, that he would-

‘A penny. Pamela Dee, you’re blushing like a
schoolgirl!’