The House at Midnight
THE HOUSE AT MIDNIGHT
Lucie Whitehouse
BLOOMSBURY
For my parents, with love
CONTENTS
Even now, I can remember the first time I saw the house as clearly as if there were a video of it playing in my head.
Danny, Martha and I had driven up from London together, the force of our collective will keeping my elderly 2CV from one of its increasingly frequent breakdowns. Cold night air had forced its way into the car round the loose windowpanes as I coaxed it along at speeds for which I could feel it reproaching me. I think we all had a feeling of adventure that evening, leaving the city as so many other people had been pouring into it, going against the tide.
Lucas's directions had been easy to follow until the last part. We came off the motorway and soon were lost in the maze of minor roads that laced across southern Oxfordshire. A part of me was glad; I wanted to be ready before seeing him but the miles had disappeared too quickly. The half-hour we spent shuttling along the same dark lanes again and again had given me time to think. Finally I pulled up at the side of the road in the village we had been circling.
Danny leant forward between the seats. 'This place is like the end of the world.'
He was right. Even for a village, Stoneborough was nothing. The cottages, five or six of them huddled together, had an empty air; only one was showing any light, the blue wash of television seeping through the net curtain in an upstairs window. There was a pond, its edges sharp with frozen reeds, and a village green that was little more than a patch of crisp white grass. No one had been across it since the dew fell.
'We can't go round again,' I said. 'We're going to have to ask.'
'Can't we call him?' said Martha.
'There's no reception.'
Across the road was a pub called the White Swan, a squat stone building whose roof covered it like an oversized hat. The upper windows looked out slyly from underneath. On the ground floor the curtains were drawn but a rim of yellow light was visible around them.
'It's like the place doesn't want to be found,' said Martha. She opened the passenger door and got out. With her usual long stride curtailed by the cocktail dress that clung tightly above her knees, she crossed the beam of the headlights and went in.
The radio was too loud now the car had stopped so I turned it off. Danny leant forward again. 'It had better not be much further. It's gone nine - I'm dying for a drink.' His breath carried an unmistakable whisky tang.
'You've been taking nips from that hip flask all the way. I've seen you in the rearview.' I twisted round to look at him. The light from the pub's carriage lamp cast the planes of his face into sharp relief. He looked elvish.
'It's New Year's Eve, Joanna.'
'Light me a cigarette, will you?' I asked. 'Mine are in the boot.' He rummaged around among the newspapers on the back seat and found the packet. The match flared and died. 'Thanks.'
'Your hands are shaking.'
'Are they?' I held one out flat and observed my fingers in the light from the dash. 'Maybe it's the thought of the big house. These things intimidate English teachers' daughters, you know.' I shrugged and wound down the window to blow out the smoke. It was a policy I had developed with Danny: to reveal my weakness rather than give him the pleasure of discovering it himself.
'That's one of the things I like about you. You're always so honest about your humble beginnings.' He sat back and started flicking through old text messages on his mobile.
'It'll be a thrill for me to be allowed above stairs.'
Martha came out of the pub, the heavy wooden door slamming shut behind her. 'That way, about a mile on. I think we must have gone past it at least three times. There's no sign on the road, apparently, just a track on the left that leads into a wood.' She pulled her red fake-fur jacket more tightly round her shoulders. 'It is so cold out here.'
'I thought New Yorkers were used to hard winters,' said Danny.
We drove on out of the village. Living in London, I had forgotten how dark it got in the country. Hedges flashed past, illuminated only by our headlights and falling back into blackness behind us. We saw several pairs of small eyes in the undergrowth. After we'd gone about a mile I slowed down and started to look for the driveway. We were coming into a wood. Huge trees made a skeletal tunnel over the road, their bare branches tangled and swaying eerily. I pulled slowly along the verge for a couple of minutes.
'There,' said Martha. 'That must be it.'
I turned and we started up an unmade track. I had expected to be able to see the house from the foot of the drive and squinted forward looking for lights but there was nothing, just an intricate mesh of leafless branches opening up in front of us and pulling tight as a net behind us as soon as we passed. I thought of those fairy-tale woods where the trees sprout at supernatural speeds to ensnare those foolish enough to enter but there were no signs of new growth here. Everything around us was dead or dormant, in the widow's weeds of winter. We fell silent, as if the looming and falling away of the branches was weaving an enchantment around us. The car made heavy work of the road; we bumped and lurched over potholes for the best part of another mile before we veered left and found ourselves on a circular gravel drive.
I stopped the engine. There, in front of us, was the house. Stoneborough Manor, the Cotswold-stone pile - it really was the only word - recently inherited by Lucas, my best friend. Three storeys high, it reared up out of the night as if it were facing the darkness down. There were seven windows on the first and second floors, all blankly reflecting the tiny sliver of moon, but light spilled out of everyone on the ground floor on to the two smalllawns in front of the house. An avenue of yews lined the long path to the door, which was sheltered by a portico on two smooth round columns. I felt a pang of anxiety. Lucas had described it to me pretty well, but even so the reality of it shocked me. How could it not change things between us?
We unloaded our bags from the boot and I locked the car, although who would break into it so far from civilisation was anyone's guess. I held Danny's arm as we made our way up the path; the flagstones were slippery with frost and the heels I'd just changed into didn't offer much in the way of grip. Martha rang the bell and we heard the echo of it reaching back into the house like a Chinese whisper. For a minute or two there was nothing and then the shape of a body appeared behind the stained-glass panels in the door. Suddenly there he was, lit from behind and grinning. I saw immediately that he had lost weight.
'Lucas, it's incredible,' I said, stepping forward. He put his arms around me and held me tightly. The collar of his dinner jacket was rough on my cheek.
'Hello,' he said, next to my ear.
He let me go and embraced Martha then clapped Danny on the arm.
'Mate. Come in. Did you find it all right?'
'Not without some effort,' said Danny. 'Fuck, it's fantastic. You kept this a secret. Why haven't I been here before?'
'Well, it was Patrick's. He did his entertaining in London. He was quite private here; it was a sort of family place.'
We left our bags by the door. We were standing in a central hall lit only by two large table lamps on a wooden chest. Their light pooled on to a black-and-white chequered floor. Around the edges of the room were a number of marble busts on pedestals; one of them, I saw, was wearing our college tie. Above us, the upper floors of the house spiralled away like the inside of a snail shell, getting darker and darker as they receded upwards. Our voices echoed coldly off the walls, rising away from us until they were swallowed by the body of the place. There was a strong scent of old-fashioned furniture polish.
'We'll have the champagne now everyone's here.' Lucas opened a door into an enormous drawing room. There was an immediate rise in the air temperature. The room was dominated by a white marble fireplace carved with an oak leaf and acorn design, and in the grate a fire was burning, sending up flames a foot high. Brocade curtains hung from ceiling to floor at the three windows, their sun-faded rubies and greens complementing the ivy-pattern border of the artfully threadbare carpet. Here, too, the light came only from lamps dotted around on low tables and from a pair of thick church candles on the mantelpiece. In front of the fire there were two grand chesterfields of burnished burgundy leather that looked as if they had been there since the house had been built. They were so much a part of the room I could imagine that they had grown there, sprung from seed in the carpet. Aboard these were Rachel and a man I didn't recognise. They stood up and Danny bounded over, caught Rachel in his arms and spun her around and around.
'Put me down,' she laughed. 'Put me down, Danny. You'll ruin my dress.'
He set her down on the carpet and stood back to scrutinise her. She was wearing a silver slip dress, crumpled like tin foil, deliberately torn at the shoulder and hem. 'Nice.' He nodded with approval and pouted at her.
She turned to the man and smiled at him. 'Greg, this is Danny - the inimitable - and Joanna and Martha.'
'Ah, the new boyfriend,' said Danny.
'God, you're rude.' She hit him lightly with the back of her hand. 'Not quite so new, either. It's been three months now.'
'Good to meet you.'
Greg held out a large hand and I shook it. His grip was strong and dry. Although I'd almost managed to get rid of the shyness that near crippled me as a teenager, there was still the odd person who could revive it. He was going to be one of them, obviously. Rachel's boyfriends were always good looking; Greg had short brown hair and warm brown eyes fringed by long lashes. It was also plain that he was someone who had to encounter a razor more than once a day to stay clean-shaven; the shadow around his chin and a light tan gave him a vaguely dissolute aspect. It wasn't that, though. Although he looked only three or four years older than us, there was something indefinably adult about him. When I smiled at him, I found he was watching me as if he were taking my measure. I looked down again quickly, in case I was unwittingly giving something away.
'Where's Michael?' asked Martha. 'Isn't he supposed to be here?'
Lucas turned from the highly polished table where he was putting out champagne glasses. 'He's upstairs, getting a couple of hours' sleep. I don't think he got home last night.'
'Jesus, why do people do it to themselves?' Martha went over to look at the framed photographs on the mantelpiece. She picked one up and looked at it closely. 'What can possibly be so urgent between Christmas and New Year that he can't go home?'
'They've got some big deal on. Hostile takeover, from what I can gather. He looked knackered.'
To me, Lucas looked knackered himself. Apart from the weight loss, his skin was pale. His hair, though black and curly as ever, didn't have its normal blue lustre and was in need of a cut. The champagne bottle gave a hollow sob as he pulled out its cork. He handed out the glasses then folded himself down next to me on the chesterfield. Taking out a packet of cigarettes, he lit one, tilting his head to one side in his diffident way. I found the gesture strangely reassuring, a familiar thing in foreign surroundings. 'So, how're you doing?' he said. 'It's good to see you.'
'I've missed you,' I said.
He looked down at his knee, where his fingers were picking at a loose thread in the seam of his trousers. 'I should have called you.'
'For God's sake, Lucas, that doesn't matter. How are you?'
'OK, really.' He smiled sadly. 'It's just that I can't get over the idea he's not coming back. It doesn't seem right that someone like that could just be extinguished.' He drew hard on his cigarette and a column of ash fell on to his trousers. 'To have that much - I don't know
- life force,
and for there to be nothing left ... So soon after Mum died, too. Three months - Jo, six months ago I had both of them. The two people I loved most in the world. And he chose it - that's what I'll never understand.'
All the careful words I'd prepared deserted me so I took his hand and squeezed it. He returned the pressure and then rubbed his thumb slowly against my fingers, as if it were he who was trying to reassure me.
'He liked you, you know.'
'I liked him. I've never met anyone like him,' I said truthfully.
I had been shocked to hear about Patrick's suicide. He had been more like a father to Lucas than an uncle. I had met him on a number of occasions, mostly when we'd been at university and he'd taken Lucas and me out to lunch. Even now, the times that I'd spent in his company were especially bright beads among the memories of my university years. Patrick had overwhelmed me. Although he must have been in his late fifties even then, he gave the impression of great strength, both physical and mental. His black hair had been greying a little at the temples but still looked vivid. There was something Homeric about him, as if a measure of the old heroic blood had somehow survived down into a less noble age.
He'd also made me feel as if I had something to offer. One time at the Randolph Hotel, when I'd felt intimidated by the lunching grandees and the formality of the dining room, I'd been trying to describe to him a particularly brash girl in the year above whom Lucas and I both loathed. Although I couldn't remember what my words had been, I still thought about how he had reached across the table for my hand and said, 'You must write one day. You have a wonderful gift for metaphor.' From anyone else it would have sounded affected but from him, as successful as he was and with what I perceived as his hot line to the cultural hub of things, it was the best compliment I'd ever had. Although our relationship had never been close enough for me to tell him so, he became a sort of inspiration to me, someone who thought I was worth encouraging. In his presence, the world opened out, ready for conquering. And he, this man who could have done anything, had decided to take his own life.
'He hoped you were my girlfriend.'
I laughed to cover my surprise. The question of the relationship between us was an old one, although we had never spoken about it ourselves before.
The first time I had seen Lucas was in our tutor's room at Oxford in Freshers' Week. He was wearing a navy fisherman's jumper, jeans and Converse shoes and, despite his height, was being swallowed by the brown velvet sofa with the dodgy springs we soon learnt not to sit on. He didn't fight it or nervously try to sit further forward, just let himself disappear into it. I immediately put it down to a public-school self-assurance. There were plenty of examples walking the quads as if they were on their ancestral estates and propping up the college bar with the confidence of the long established. I found them excruciating. One part of me was intimidated, and envious that people of eighteen and nineteen could be so confident; the other part wondered how they could be so obtuse as never to experience a moment's self-doubt.