The Little Stranger (37 page)

‘I bet that saloon’s been a blasted nuisance since the moment they added it,’ Caroline said, putting a hand on her mother’s shoulder and raising herself on tiptoe, trying to see. ‘I wonder how far the rainwater has seeped. I hope the bricks won’t need repointing. We might manage a repair to the pipe itself, but we haven’t the budget for anything more serious.’

The subject seemed to preoccupy her. She discussed it with her mother, both of them weaving about on the lawn for a better perspective on the damage. Then we all moved up to the terrace for a closer look. I went quite silently, unable to summon up much enthusiasm for the task; I found myself glancing over to the other side of the angular bay of the saloon, to the garden door, where I had stood with Caroline in the darkness, and where she had lifted her head and clumsily moved her mouth to mine. And for a moment I was seized so vividly by the memory of it all, I felt almost giddy. Mrs Ayres called me over to the house; I made what can only have been a few rather idiotic observations about the bricks. But then I drew away, passing on around the terrace until that troubling door was well out of my sight.

I had turned to face the parkland, and was gazing sightlessly across it, when I became aware that Caroline had also drawn away from her mother. Perhaps, after all, she had been bothered by the sight of the door, too. She came slowly over to my side, putting her ungloved hands into her pockets. She said, without looking at me, ‘Can you hear Babb’s men?’

‘Babb’s men?’ I repeated stupidly.

‘Yes, it’s clear today.’

She nodded to where, in the distance, giant webs of scaffolding were now being erected, with houses rising inside them, square and brash. Tuning my ears to the sound, I caught, on the still, damp air, the faint concussive clamour of the work, the calling of the men, a sudden tumbling of planks or poles.

‘Like the sounds of a battle,’ Caroline said. ‘Don’t you think? Perhaps like that phantom battle people are said to be able to hear in the middle of the night when they go camping on Edge Hill.’

I looked into her face but didn’t answer, not quite trusting my voice; and I suppose my saying nothing was as good as murmuring her name or putting out a hand to her. She saw my expression, then glanced over at her mother, and—I don’t know how it happened, but some charge or current at last passed between us, and in it everything was acknowledged, the spring of her hips against mine on the dance-floor, the chill dark intimacy of the car, the expectation, the frustration, the tussle, the kiss … Again I felt almost giddy. She lowered her head, and for a second we stood in silence, uncertain what to do. Then I said, very quietly, ‘I’ve been thinking of you, Caroline. I—’

‘Doctor!’ Her mother was calling to me again. She wanted me to take a look at another patch of brickwork. An old lead clamp had worked its way loose, and she was concerned that the wall it supported might be beginning to weaken … The charge of the moment was lost. Caroline had already turned and was making her way over. I joined her at her mother’s side; we gazed gloomily at the bulging bricks and the cracks in the mortar, and I offered up a few more inanities about possible repairs.

Soon, beginning to feel the cold, Mrs Ayres put her arm through mine again, and let me lead her back indoors, to the little parlour.

She had spent the past week, she told me, hardly venturing from her room, in an attempt to drive away the last of her bronchitis. Now, as we sat, she held her hands to the fire, rubbing the warmth back into them with obvious relish. She had lost weight recently; the rings moved on her fingers, and she straightened the stones. But, ‘How marvellous it is,’ she said, in a clear voice, ‘to be up and about again! I’d begun to think myself like the poet. Which poet do I mean, Caroline?’

Caroline was lowering herself on to the sofa. ‘I don’t know, Mother.’

‘Yes, you do. You know all the poets. The lady poet, frightfully bashful.’

‘Elizabeth Barrett?’

‘No, not her.’

‘Charlotte Mew?’

‘Good heavens, how many there were! But I meant the American one, who kept to her room for years and years, sending out little notes and so on.’

‘Oh, Emily Dickinson, I expect.’

‘Yes, Emily Dickinson. A rather exhausting poet, now I come to think of it. All that breathlessness and skipping about. What’s wrong with nice long lines and a jaunty rhythm? When I was a girl, Dr Faraday, I had a German governess, a Miss Elsner. She was terribly keen on Tennyson …’

She went on to tell us some tale of her childhood. I’m sorry to say I barely heard it. I had taken the chair across from hers, which meant that Caroline, on the sofa, was to my left, just far enough out of the range of my vision for me to have to make a deliberate movement of my head to catch her eye. The movement grew more strained and unnatural every time I made it; it felt unnatural, too, not to turn to her at all. And though sometimes our gazes would meet and snag, more often her eyes would seem guarded to me, her expression almost dead. ‘Have you been down to the new houses this week?’ I asked her, when Betty had brought our tea, and ‘Have you any plans to visit the farm today?’—thinking I could offer her a lift, and get some time with her on her own. But she answered in a level voice that, No, she had various chores to see to and meant to stay at home now for the rest of the afternoon … What more could I do, with her mother there? Once, when Mrs Ayres turned aside, I looked over more frankly, with a sort of shrug, and a frown, and she looked quickly away, as if flustered. The next moment I watched her casually drawing down a tartan rug from the back of the sofa, and I had a sudden brutal memory of her tightening the blanket around herself in my car, pulling away from me. I heard her voice:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t!
And the whole thing seemed hopeless to me.

At last Mrs Ayres noticed my distraction.

‘You’re quiet today, Doctor. Nothing on your mind, I hope?’

I said apologetically, ‘My day started early, that’s all. And I still have patients to call on, alas. I’m very glad to see you looking so much better. But now’—I made a show of looking at my watch—‘I’m afraid I must go.’

‘Oh, what a pity!’

I got to my feet. Mrs Ayres rang for Betty again and sent her off to fetch my things. As I put on my overcoat, Caroline rose, and I thought with a surge of apprehension and excitement that she planned to walk with me to the front door. But she went only as far as the table, to load the teacups on to the tray. While I stood exchanging a final word with her mother, however, she drew close to me again. Her head was bent, but I saw her glance in a noticing way at the front of my coat. She said quietly, ‘You’re coming apart at the seams, Doctor,’ reaching out and taking hold of my top button, which was dangling by a couple of threads of fraying brown cotton. Caught off guard by the gesture, I jerked back slightly, and the threads unravelled; the button came free in her hand, and we laughed. She ran her thumb over its plaited leather surface, and then, with a touch of self-consciousness, dropped it into my outstretched palm.

I put the button into my pocket. ‘One of the perils of being a bachelor, I’m afraid,’ I said as I did it.

And the truth is, I meant absolutely nothing by the comment, it was the sort of thing I had said at Hundreds a thousand times before. But when the implications of the words struck me I felt the blood rush into my face. Caroline and I stood as if frozen; I didn’t trust myself to look at her. It was Mrs Ayres my gaze was drawn to. She was looking at her daughter and me with an expression of mild inquiry—as if we were ‘in’ on some joke that excluded her, but that she naturally assumed we would now make clear. When we said nothing—simply stood there, blushing and awkward—her expression changed. It was like light moving rapidly over a landscape, the inquiry giving way to a sudden blaze of astonished understanding, the astonishment swiftly transforming itself into a tight, self-deprecating smile.

She turned to the table at her side, putting out her hand as if absently searching for something, then got to her feet.

‘I’m afraid I’ve been rather tiresome today,’ she said, drawing in her shawls.

I said nervously, ‘Good heavens, you could never be that!’

She wouldn’t look at me. She glanced at Caroline instead. ‘Why don’t you walk Dr Faraday to his car?’

Caroline laughed. ‘I think, after all this time, Dr Faraday is capable of finding his own car.’

‘Of course I am!’ I said. ‘You mustn’t trouble.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Ayres, ‘it’s I who’ve been the trouble. I see that now. Chattering on … Doctor, do take off your coat and stay longer. You mustn’t think of hurrying away on my account. I have chores to finish upstairs.’

‘Oh, Mother,’ said Caroline. ‘Really. What on earth’s got into you? Dr Faraday has patients to visit.’

Mrs Ayres was still gathering her things together. She said, as if Caroline hadn’t spoken, ‘I dare say you have lots to discuss, the two of you.’

‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘I assure you! Nothing at all.’

I said, ‘I really must go, you know.’

‘Well, Caroline will walk with you.’

Again Caroline laughed, her voice hardening. ‘No, Caroline won’t! Doctor, I’m sorry. What nonsense this all is! All because of a button. I wish you were handier with your needle. Mother will give me no peace, now … Mother, sit down again. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s quite wrong. You needn’t leave the room. I’m going upstairs myself.’

‘Please, don’t do that,’ I said quickly, putting out my hand to her; and the touch of feeling that crept into my voice and pose must have done more than anything to give us away. She had already begun moving purposefully across the room; now she made an almost impatient gesture—shaking her head at me. And in another moment she was gone.

I watched the closing of the door behind her, then turned back to Mrs Ayres.

‘
Is
it nonsense?’ she asked me.

I said helplessly, ‘I don’t know.’

She drew in her breath, and her shoulders sank as she released it. She returned to her chair, sitting down heavily, and gesturing for me to return to mine. I perched at the front of it, still in my overcoat, my hat and scarf in my hand. We said nothing for a moment. I could see her thinking it all through. When she did at last speak, her voice had a false brightness to it—like a dull metal, overpolished.

‘Naturally,’ she said, ‘I’ve thought of you and Caroline making a match, many times! I think I thought of it the very first time you came here. There’s the difference in ages; but that means nothing to a man, and Caroline’s too sensible a girl to be troubled by those sort of considerations … But you and she seemed good friends merely.’

‘We’re still good friends, I hope,’ I said.

‘And something more than friends, clearly.’ She glanced at the door, and frowned, perplexed. ‘How secretive she is! She’d have told me nothing of this, you know. And I, her mother!’

‘There’s scarcely anything to tell, that’s why.’

‘Oh, but this isn’t the sort of thing one does by degrees. One crosses the floor, as it were. I shan’t ask exactly when the floor was crossed, in this case.’

I shifted about uncomfortably. ‘Very recently, as it happens.’

‘Caroline’s of age, of course. And she always did know her own mind. But, with her father dead, and her poor brother so unwell, I suppose I should ask you something. Your intentions, and so on. How Edwardian that sounds! You’ll have no illusions about our finances; that’s a blessing.’

I shifted again. ‘Look, you know, this is all a little awkward. You’d do better talking to Caroline herself. I can’t speak for her.’

She laughed, unsmiling. ‘No, I shouldn’t recommend you try.’

‘I’d be happier, to be honest, if we could let the subject drop. I really do have to go.’

She bowed her head. ‘Of course, if you wish.’

But I sat struggling with my feelings for a few more moments, perturbed at the turn my visit had taken, unhappy that this thing—which still struck me as having come more or less from nowhere—had put such an obvious distance between us. At last, abruptly, I got up. I drew close to her chair, and she tilted back her head to look at me, and I was amazed and alarmed to see that her eyes were wet with tears. The flesh around them seemed to have darkened and slackened, and her hair—for once, without its silk square or mantilla—was, I realised, streaked with grey.

The artificial brightness of manner had gone, too. She said, with a touch of playful self-pity, ‘Oh, what’s to become of me, Doctor? My world is dwindling to the point of a pin. You won’t abandon me completely, you and Caroline?’

‘Abandon you?’ I stepped back, shaking my head, trying to laugh the whole thing off. But my tone sounded as false to my ears as hers had, a few minutes before. I said, ‘This is all absurdly precipitate, you know. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, and no one’s to be abandoned. I can promise you that.’

And I left her, going rather dazedly along the passage, more unsettled than ever by the turn of events and by the speed with which, in such a short space of time, things seemed to have jolted forward. I don’t think I even thought of going after Caroline. I simply made my way to the front door, putting on my hat and scarf as I went.

But as I crossed the hall, some sound or movement alerted me: I glanced up the staircase and saw her there, on the first landing, just beyond the turn of the banister. She was lit from above by the dome of glass, her brown hair looking almost fair in the soft, kind light, but her face in shadow.

I took off my hat again, and went over to the lowest stair. She didn’t come down, so I called softly up to her.

‘Caroline! I’m so sorry. I really can’t stay. Talk to your mother, will you? She—she has an idea that we’re about to elope or something.’

She didn’t answer. I waited, and then added more quietly: ‘We aren’t about to elope, are we?’

She hooked a hand around one of the balusters and slightly shook her head.

‘Two sensible people like us,’ she murmured. ‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’

Her face being in shadow, her expression was unclear. Her voice was low, but level; I don’t think she meant it playfully. But she must, after all, have been waiting there for me to appear; and it struck me suddenly that she was still waiting—waiting for me to climb the stairs, go up to her, nudge the thing forward, put it well beyond question or doubt. But when I did take a step upwards, it was as though she couldn’t help herself: a look of alarm came into her face—I caught it, even through the shadow—and she took a swift step back.