The Little Stranger (42 page)

But, of course, everything had changed, and from my point of view those visits were sometimes rather hard to bear. I thought of Caroline constantly now. Looking into her strong, angular face, I couldn’t believe that I had ever found it plain. Meeting her eye across the teacups I felt like a man made of tinder, flaring up at the simple friction of her gaze against mine. Sometimes when I had said my goodbye she would walk with me to my car; we’d go in silence through the house, passing room after shadowy room, and I’d think of leading her into one of those wasted chambers and pulling her into my arms. Now and then I chanced it; but she was never at ease. She’d stand against me with her head averted, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. I’d feel the softening and warming of her limbs against mine—but slowly, slowly, as if they begrudged even their own slight yielding. And if ever, frustrated, I pressed further, the result was disaster. Her soft limbs would harden, her hands come up across her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d say—just as she had on that chilling occasion in my car. ‘I’m sorry. It isn’t fair of me, I know. I just need a little time.’

So I learned not to ask too much of her. My great fear now was of pushing her away. I had the sense that, overburdened as she was with Hundreds business, our engagement was simply one complication too many: I supposed she was waiting until things at the Hall improved before allowing herself to plan for the time beyond.

And at that point, real improvement seemed close at hand. Work on the council houses was progressing; the extending of water and electricity out to the park was underway; things at the farm, apparently, were looking up, and Makins was pleased with all the changes. Mrs Ayres, too, despite Caroline’s doubts about her, still seemed healthier and happier than she had in months. Every time I called at the house I found her carefully dressed, with touches of rouge and powder on her face; as usual, in fact, she was far better turned out than her daughter, who, despite the change in our relationship, continued to wear her shapeless old sweaters and skirts, her rough wool hats and stout shoes. But since the weather remained wintry, I felt I could forgive her that. Once the season turned, I planned to take her into Leamington and quietly kit her out with some decent dresses. I thought often, and longingly, of the summer days to come: the Hall with its doors and windows thrown open, Caroline in short sleeves and loose-necked blouses, her long limbs brown, her dusty feet bare … My own cheerless house felt as dim as a stage-set to me now. At night I would lie in my bed, weary but wakeful, thinking of Caroline lying in hers. My mind would go softly across the darkened miles between us, to slip like a poacher through the Hundreds gate and along the overgrown drive, to nudge open the swollen front door, to inch across the chequered marble; and then to go creeping, creeping towards her, up the still and silent stairs.

T
hen, one day in early March, I dropped in at the house as usual to find that something had happened. Those mysterious tricks, or ‘parlour games’—as Caroline had once dubbed them—had started up again, in a new form.

She didn’t want to tell me about them at first. She said they were ‘too boring to mention’. But she and her mother both looked tired, and I happened to comment on it; and then she confessed to me that, for the past few nights, they had been woken in the early hours of the morning by the ringing of the telephone bell. It had happened three or four times, she said, always between two and three o’clock; and every time, when they had gone down to unhook the receiver, the line had been dead.

They had wondered, at one point, if the caller could be me. ‘You were the only person we could think of,’ Caroline said, ‘who might be up at that sort of time.’ She glanced at her mother, colouring slightly. ‘It wasn’t you, I suppose?’

‘No, it wasn’t!’ I replied. ‘I wouldn’t dream of calling so late! And at two o’clock this morning, as it happens, I was tucked up in bed. So unless I put through the call in my sleep—’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, smiling. ‘There must have been some sort of muddle at the exchange. I just wanted to be sure.’

She spoke as if that put an end to the matter, so I let the subject drop. The next time I visited, however, I learned that another call had come, again around half past two, a night or two before. Caroline had left the telephone to ring this time, lying in bed, unwilling to get up in the cold and the darkness. But at last its hard, hectic clamour had been too much to ignore and, hearing her mother stirring in her room, she had gone down and picked up the receiver—only to find that, as usual, the line was dead.

‘At least, no,’ she corrected herself, ‘it wasn’t dead. That’s the funny thing. There was no voice, but I thought—oh, it sounds silly, but I could have sworn there was someone there. Someone who’d rung particularly for Hundreds, particularly for us. Again, you see, I thought of you.’

‘And once again,’ I said, ‘I was fast asleep and dreaming.’ And since we were on our own this time, I added, ‘Dreaming of you, very probably.’

I put up my hand to her hair; she caught my fingers and stilled them. ‘Yes. But
someone
called. And what I’ve been thinking—I can’t get the idea out of my mind. But you don’t think it could have been Roddie, do you?’

‘Rod!’ I said, startled. ‘Oh, surely not.’

‘It’s possible, isn’t it? Suppose he’s in some sort of trouble—at that clinic, I mean. We haven’t seen him for so long. Dr Warren just says the same thing every time he writes. They could be doing anything to him, trying any sort of medicine or treatment. We don’t know what they’re doing, really. We just pay the bills.’

I took both her hands in mine. She saw my face and said, ‘It’s only this feeling I had, that someone had rung up, well, with something to tell us.’

‘It was half past two in the morning, Caroline! Anybody would feel like that. It must be just what you thought last time; there must have been a mix-up in the lines. In fact, why don’t you ring the exchange right now, and talk to the girl, explain what’s happened?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘If it will set your mind at rest, why not?’

So, frowning, she went over to the old-fashioned little parlour extension, and dialled for the operator. She stood with her back to me as she did it, but I listened to her running through the story of the calls. ‘Yes, if you wouldn’t mind,’ I heard her say, her voice artificially bright; and then, a moment later, with some of the brightness gone, ‘I see. Yes, I expect you’re right. Yes, thank you. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

She set down the telephone and its ear-piece and turned back to me, her frown deeper than ever. Raising her fingers to her mouth to bite at the tips of them, she said, ‘The woman who works the night shift isn’t there now, of course. But the girl I spoke to looked at the tickets—their log, or whatever, where they keep a record of the calls. She said no one telephoned Hundreds this week, no one at all. She said no one called last week, either.’

‘Then,’ I said, after a moment, ‘that puts the whole thing beyond doubt. There’s clearly a fault with the line—or more probably with the wiring in this house. It wasn’t Rod at all. You see? It wasn’t anyone.’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly, still nibbling at her fingers. ‘That’s what the girl said. Yes, it must be that, mustn’t it?’

She spoke as if wanting to be convinced. But the telephone rang again that night. And because when I next saw her she was still irrationally troubled by the idea that her brother might be trying to contact her, to put her mind completely at rest I called up the Birmingham clinic, to ask if there was any possibility of Rod’s having made the calls. I was assured that there was not. It was Dr Warren’s assistant I spoke to, and his tone, I noticed, was less breezy than when I had seen him just before Christmas. He told me that Rod, after seeming to have made some slight but definite progress at the start of the year, had recently disappointed them all by having ‘a bad couple of weeks’. He didn’t go into details, but, like a fool, I made this call with Caroline at my side. She caught enough of the conversation to realise that the news was not good; and after that she was more subdued and preoccupied than ever.

A
nd as if in response to this shift in her anxieties, the telephone calls ceased, and a fresh set of nuisances took over. This time I was there the day they began, having dropped in between cases: Caroline and I were again alone together in the little parlour—in fact I had been kissing her goodbye and she had just stepped out of my arms—when the door opened, surprising us both. Betty came in, made a curtsey, and asked ‘what was wanted of her’.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Caroline, flustered, speaking sharply, brushing back her hair.

‘The bell rung, miss.’

‘Well, I didn’t ring it. It must be my mother who wants you.’

Betty looked confused. ‘Madam’s upstairs, miss.’

‘Yes, I know she’s upstairs.’

‘But please, miss, it were the little parlour bell that rung.’

‘Well, it couldn’t have been, could it, if I didn’t ring it, and neither did Dr Faraday! Do you think it rang itself? Go on upstairs, if my mother wants you.’

Blinking, Betty backed away. When the door was closed I caught Caroline’s eye, wiping my mouth and almost laughing. But she wouldn’t return my smile. She turned away as if impatient. And she said, with surprising force, ‘Oh, this is hateful. I can’t bear it! All this slinking around, like cats.’

‘Like cats!’ I said, amused by the image. I reached for her hand to pull her back. ‘Come here, Puss. Nice Puss.’

‘Stop it, for heaven’s sake. Betty might come.’

‘Well, Betty’s a country girl. She knows about the birds and the bees, and the cats … Besides, you know the solution, don’t you? Marry me. Next week—tomorrow—whenever you like. Then I can kiss you, and to hell with who sees. And little Betty will be busier than ever, bringing us our eggs and bacon in bed in the morning, and nice things like that.’

I was still smiling, but she turned back to me with an odd expression. She said, ‘But, what do you mean? We wouldn’t—we wouldn’t be
here
, would we?’

We had never discussed the practical side of the life we would have together, married. I had taken it for granted that I would live with her there at the Hall. I said, less certainly than before, ‘Well, why not? We couldn’t leave your mother, could we?’

She was frowning. ‘But how would it work, with your patients? I’d assumed—’

I smiled. ‘You wouldn’t rather live with me in Lidcote, in that dreadful old house of Gill’s?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, we can sort something out. I’ll keep the surgery going in the village, perhaps start up some night-system with Graham … I don’t know. Everything will change, anyway, in July, when the Health Service comes in.’

‘But when you came back from London,’ she said, ‘you told me there might be a post for you there.’

She took me by surprise; I’d forgotten all about it. My trip to London felt an age away now; the affair with her had put the whole thing out of my head. I said carelessly, ‘Oh, there’s no point thinking about it now. July will change everything. There might be posts galore after that; or posts for no one.’

‘For no one? But, then how would we ever leave?’

I blinked. ‘Would we want to leave?’

‘I thought,’ she began, and she looked so anxious, I reached for her hand again, saying, ‘Look, don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time for all this sort of thing once we are married. That’s the main thing, isn’t it? The thing we want most of all?’

She said that yes, of course it was … I raised her hand to my mouth to kiss it, then, putting on my hat, I made my way to the front door.

And there I saw Betty again. She was coming down the staircase, looking more confused than ever, and slightly sulky, too. Mrs Ayres, it seemed, was fast asleep in her bedroom, so it couldn’t possibly have been she who had rung for a maid. But then, Betty told me, she had never supposed that it had been: it was the little parlour bell that had rung—she would swear to it on her own mother’s life—and if Miss Caroline and I didn’t believe it, well, it wasn’t fair, to have her word doubted like that. Her voice rose as she spoke, and soon Caroline appeared, wondering what the commotion was. Glad to escape, I left them arguing together, and thought nothing more of it.

By the time I returned at the end of that week, however, the Hall was, in Caroline’s words, ‘a madhouse’. The call-bells had developed a mysterious life of their own, ringing out at all sorts of hours, so that Betty and poor Mrs Bazeley were continually traipsing from room to room asking what was wanted of them, sending Caroline and her mother to distraction. Caroline had examined the junction-box of bells and wires down in the basement and could find nothing wrong with it.

‘It’s as though an imp gets in there,’ she told me, taking me down to the vaulted passage, ‘and plays on the wires to torment us! It isn’t mice or rats, either. We’ve put down trap after trap and caught nothing.’

I looked at the box in question: that imperious device, as I had once thought of it, to which wires ran, like the nerves of the house, through tubes and channels from the rooms above. I knew from experience that the wires were not especially sensitive things, and that sometimes one had to tug at a lever quite vigorously in order to set a bell ringing, so Caroline’s story rather bemused me. She brought me a lamp and a screwdriver, and I poked around at the workings for a while, but the mechanism was very simple, none of the wires was overtaut, and, like Caroline herself, I could find no fault. I could only, with some unease, recall those creaks or raps that the women had heard, a few weeks before; I thought, too, of the sagging saloon ceiling, the spreading damp, the bulging brickwork … I said nothing about it to Caroline, but it seemed pretty clear to me that the Hall had reached a point of dilapidation where one defect was almost setting off another; and I felt more dismayed and frustrated by the house’s decline than ever.

Meanwhile, the call-bells continued their restless, maddening activity, until finally, sick and tired of the whole thing, Caroline took a pair of wire-snippers and put the junction-box out of use. After that, whenever she or her mother wanted Betty they had to go to the head of the service staircase and shout for her. Often they’d simply carry on down to the kitchen and see to the chore themselves—just as if they had no servants at all.